What We’re Reading This Week, September 12-16

Posted on September 16, 2016September 16, 2016

Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

We Just Don’t Like You – After a tough week for both candidates, Trump isn’t doing well, but neither is Clinton. While national polls still show Clinton with a lead, it’s becoming more obvious that Clinton is the least-popular major party nominee of all time — except for Donald Trump. Read more in Vox.

Path Forward – With the new round of polling, it looks like Trump has a path forward to the magical 270 electoral votes. Read more in Politico.

Minibus or Bigbus? – In January, House and Senate vowed to move all 12 individual spending bills, something that hadn’t been accomplished in more than a decade. That leaves Republicans with the challenge of funding the government for the next fiscal year, which has in the past been done through passage of an omnibus that piles all 12 appropriations bills together…or in a series of piles considered “minibuses”. Neither of which has much political will to happen. Read more in The Hill.

I’m Not That Guy – Last year, Speaker Ryan reluctantly shoved through an omnibus package after Boehner’s resignation and his own surprise ascension to the Speakership. The omnibus was a last testament to Boehner’s troubled leadership. House conservatives pressured him to resign after they grew sick of him ramming through last-minute, backroom spending deals with Democrats. This year, Ryan’s probably going to have to do the same thing again. Read more in The Hill.

Take Note – A coalition of 40 civil rights, legal-aid and public-interest groups is urging the Education Department to track and monitor the effect of student loans on people of color, who are shouldering the burden of education debt. Read more in The Washington Post.

Um, the Books? – SUNY Stoney Brook has a partnership with Amazon, now the university’s official book retailer. Students can purchase texts through a Stony Brook-specific Amazon page and have them delivered to campus. In the campus store, where the textbooks used to be, there are now adult coloring books, racks of university-branded polos and windbreakers and three narrow bookshelves displaying assorted novels. The rest of the store is a vibrant collage of spirit wear and school supplies: backpacks and baseball caps; pompom hats and striped scarves; notebooks and correction fluid. Read more in the New York Times.

Well Endowed – One of the most polarizing issues in higher education took center stage on Capitol Hill on Tuesday as House members questioned whether universities could do more with their tax-exempt endowments to help families struggling with the high costs of college. Read more in The Washington Post.

Best Towns – It’s that time of year again when college students are streaming back to school. Across the nation, some 17 million Americans are headed to college this fall. But, where, exactly, are they heading to? To get at this, we charted America’s biggest and best college towns based on 2014 enrollment data for some 750 metro and micropolitan locations across the U.S. Read more in The Atlantic’s CityLab.

Best of the Best – USNews is out with it’s annual “Best of” Rankings on Colleges. Princeton came out on top. However, thanks to the Internet, there’s a plethora of rankings for just about every aspect of college life including best bars, best green colleges, best radio stations, best dorms. Read more at The Washington Post.

Buying Bacon – You’ve probably seen and handled supermarket bacon countless times. The standard one-pound package shows the bacon slices fanned out, with only their leading edges exposed. Those front edges tend to feature more lean muscle than the fattier back edges creating the illusion that the bacon is leaner than it is. Thus selling more bacon. Read more in Bloomberg.

The Rise of Chickens – Think chicken is every where? You can thank the Catholic Church. Read more in Science.

Senate Pushes CR Off Until Monday

Posted on September 15, 2016September 15, 2016

After a week of declarations and revisions, the Senate has postponed their consideration of a CR until Monday. Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle conceded they are not prepared to wrap up negotiations this week.

Congressional leaders and appropriators have been working on the funding bill since coming back into session earlier this month. The key sticking points appear to be language in the Zika conference report that would restrict which clinics in Puerto Rico can receive additional funding and an exemption for certain types of mosquito spraying under the Clean Water Act. Those objections caused Democrats to block the $1.1 billion Zika funding bill in the Senate in June.

In addition to Zika funding, numerous lawmakers have requested that emergency spending, including money for Flint’s lead-contaminated drinking water problem and Louisiana’s recent flooding. The White House sent a $2.6 billion emergency funding request to Congress on Tuesday and Louisiana Members are pushing for at least some of that money to be added to the CR.

While the Senate has, so far and continues to, lead the discussions around a CR and many expect McConnell to move legislation through his chamber first, beginning with procedural vote Monday night. House Appropriations Chair Hal Rogers (R-KY) said he reserved the right for the House to move a bill to the floor before the Senate, but with the House leaving early Thursday afternoon, such a move seems unlikely.

Hiccup with a CR

Posted on September 9, 2016

Writing a stopgap spending measure, known as a Continuing Resolution (CR), to avoid a government shutdown on October 1st, just got a bit harder than lawmakers anticipated.

Typically, CRs extend current funding levels into the new fiscal year for a short duration. Unfortunately, there’s a hitch this time. If current FY2016 funding is simply extended, it would exceed the FY 2017 discretionary spending caps as set by Sequestration in 2011. How much will it exceed? According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a straight extension will exceed the caps by $10 billion.As scored by CBO for the purposes of a stopgap, FY 2016 base discretionary spending comes in at $1.080 trillion, $10 billion above the $1.070 trillion, FY 2017 limit.

The CBO explained that most of the excess spending comes from the scheduled expiration of some spending cuts in fiscal 2017, as previously passed in prior fiscal years.

So some of the same budget maneuvers that allowed Congress to spend billions more dollars in FY 2016 are now complicating the crafting of a stopgap funding measure to keep the government operating when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The maneuvers that were used in FY 2016 include changes in mandatory programs, or so-called CHIMPs, that inflated nondefense spending in FY 2016. CHIMPs refer to provisions in appropriations bills that reduce or constrain mandatory spending, providing an offset for higher discretionary spending.

In preparing for a stopgap spending measure, the CBO’s score must eliminate any savings that do not automatically continue into the next year, including changes in mandatory programs that appropriators often make to free up extra money for discretionary projects. Changes in mandatory programs, mostly from an expiring cut to the Children’s Health Insurance Fund, account for $5.6 billion of the lost savings. Further, the CBO score assumes that a CR extends the entirety of the subsequent fiscal year, not a short duration — a prudent move since it is currently unclear how long the CR will last. The date being cited most often now is December 9th.

It is not yet clear whether the overage problem can be fixed through some simple technical corrections, or whether it could mean trimming any popular programs.

Meanwhile, the House Republican Caucus remains deeply divided on how to proceed. Despite the Constitution clearly stating that the power of the purse originates in the House, the Senate will go first in trying to pass a short-term CR next week to keep the federal government functioning through the November election.

Stay tuned.

What We’re Reading This Week, September 6-9

Posted on September 9, 2016September 9, 2016

Here’s a selection of article the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.

Stepping Up – The House Freedom Caucus wasted no time since returning from their summer recess showing just how tough they can make life for Speaker Paul Ryan — and for Democrat Hillary Clinton if she becomes President. They’re pressuring Ryan to oppose a deal taking shape in the Senate on must-pass legislation to keep the government open, and promising Clinton to keep investigating email issues even if she ends up in the White House. Read more in the AP.

Take Down – The closure of ITT Technical Institutes, a national chain of career schools with a 50-year legacy, is fueling a debate over the federal government’s aggressive policing of for-profit higher education and whether it could destroy the industry. Read more in the Washington Post.

Vice President Dick Cheney's bust in the 2nd floor Senate connecting corridor of the Capitol (AOC) — Vice President Dick Cheney’s bust in the 2nd floor Senate connecting corridor of the Capitol (AOC)

Endowed? – A Sept. 13 hearing of a House Ways and Means subcommittee is set to look at how colleges, through their tax-exempt endowments, are trying to reduce tuition. The hearing in Washington, which will feature testimony from policy experts and college representatives, comes as many endowments are expected to post investment declines for FY 2016. Read more in Bloomberg.

Five To Flip – Democrats must net five seats — or four and retain the White House — to regain control of the upper chamber. They are defending 10 seats, while Republicans face a more challenging path, needing to defend 24 seats. The Hill has the nine seats most likely to go from Red to Blue.

10 Most Vulnerable – While several sitting Members of Congress have already been defeated in the primary, here is the latest 10 most likely Members to have a rough election. Read more at Roll Call.

Long List – Congress is back for a few weeks, and they have a lot to pack in, including many to-dos for research and science. Read more in Science.

Pledge for Childcare – Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton renewed her pledge to invest in child-care programs on college campuses, spotlighting the need for a service that has been disappearing at many schools just as the number of student parents grows. Read more in The Washington Post.

Balancing Act – Speaker Ryan has a tough month ahead of competing interests and political demands. Uniting the GOP conference has not proven to be an easy task. Read more at Roll Call.

Fact’s Don’t Matter – According to the Pew Research Center, the nation is more polarized than at any time in recent history. While some of the issues dividing us boil down to ideology and preference, there is at least one on which hard science should have a strong say. Facts, however, seem to polarize us more, rather than unite us. Read more in the New York Times.

Redistricting Redrawing the Map – A Washington Post-SurveyMonkey poll of all 50 states indicates the 2016 campaign could flip several red and blue states from their longtime loyalties. See how it shakes out at The Washington Post.

8 Hours in the Sky – For eight hours, with American airspace completely cleared of jets, a single blue-and-white Boeing-747, tail number 29000—filled with about 65 passengers, crew and press, and the 43rd President, George W. Bush, as well as 70 box lunches and 25 pounds of bananas—traversed the eastern United States. Politico has the story of those on Air Force One 15 years after the attacks of 9/11.

They’re BACK!!!!

Posted on September 6, 2016September 6, 2016

After seven weeks of recess, the House and Senate are back to work today. Congressional lawmakers now have approximately 17 legislative days to figure out how to avoid a government shutdown before the new fiscal year (FY 2017) begins on October 1. As we saw last year (a non-election year), coming to an agreement on how to allocate federal fiscal resources is already and tough job. Now, with re-election campaigns now in high gear, political tensions have only grown worse since Congress adjourned in mid-July, further complicating the difficult dealmaking to come.

Adding another layer of complications and vitriol, at least on the House side, the House Freedom caucus, a vocal group of about 40 hard-core conservatives, are blaming GOP leadership for the defeat of one of the caucus’s most active members, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), in a party primary in August.

Much of this week will likely be spent drawing battle lines over the expected stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), that would extend current FY 2016 funding levels into the new fiscal year (FY 2017) for a short length of time. While a typical CR simply extends all current funding levels for a specified amount of time, pressure is building to add money to combat the Zika virus. A $1.1 billion Zika package collapsed in July in a partisan standoff, although efforts could be made to revive it with modifications. The Senate is feeling pressure to include Zika funding from Senators like Floridian Marco Rubio, who’s state has been particularly impacted. Flood relief for Louisiana is as expected to be discussed.

The length of the CR is also in question. Fiscal hawks of the House Freedom Caucus have long been arguing for a CR into March of 2017 to wait until the new President is in office. Many others in Congress, namely the Democrats, want to clear the decks for the new President and pass an omnibus measure in December — something the staunch conservatives in Congress have vowed to fight in the lame duck session. In fact, Senate Democrats have been very vocal on this issue, and without the support of the Senate Democrats on any CR measure, the Senate Republicans cannot overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat cloture.

Look for much posturing to come!