The Supreme Court is set to release decisions this morning starting at 10:00am eastern time (right now!). The court still has 10 opinions to release, the health care law decision among them. While it could come today, I’m guessing they’ll wait until next week. While the decision won’t have a direct impact on UW, it will certainly create more havoc in Congress by adding another big legislative item to their already full agenda.
Stay tuned…
Earlier today, the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), Education Appropriations Subcommittee approved their FY 2013 appropriations measure by a vote of 10-7. That bill would provide $158.8 billion in discretionary spending for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, as well as related agencies. This is about $2 billion more than the FY 2012 level and roughly equal to the President’s budget request. The bill includes a discretionary program level of $12.342 billion for the Department of Labor (FY 2012 level $12.553 billion), $71.0 billion for the Department of HHS (FY 2012 level $69.62 billion), $68.52 billion for the Department of Education (FY 2012 level $68.112 billion) and $14.15 billion for related agencies (FY 2012 level $13.832 billion).
The full Senate Appropriations Committee plans to markup the bill on Thursday. At this time, we hope to also see the report accompanying the bill, which will provide more detailed information on how funds are to be spent within each of the programs. Stay tuned for more information.
You can read a summary of the bill on the Senate Appropriations Committee web page.
In its annual long term budget outlook released June 5, CBO projects that by the end of 2012, federal debt held by the public will exceed 70 percent of GDP, a dramatic increase from the end of 2008 when federal debt equaled 40 percent of the nation’s annual economic output. CBO attributes the sharp rise in debt partly to lower tax revenues and higher federal spending caused by the severe economic downturn and from policies enacted during the past few years, but notes “the growing debt also reflects an imbalance between spending and revenues that predated the recession.”
Read more about the report on the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) web site.
House appropriators say the traditionally controversial Labor-HHS-Education appropriations measure could move forward in committee in June. Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee Chairman Denny Rehberg (R-MT) said Thursday that he would like to unveil his measure when the House returns from its recess the week of June 18th. Last year, the measure was not marked up by the House committee and was eventually rolled into a year-end omnibus measure. So far this year, House appropriators have moved 10 measures, leaving only the Labor-HHS-Education and Interior-Environment spending bills to be released.
The Senate has scheduled the mark up of their Labor-HHS-Education bill for June 12th.
Source: CQRollCall.com
The Senate’s in at 9:30am and is expected to hold a key procedural vote on the farm bill at 10:30am. The House is in at 10:00am with first votes expected between 1:30—2:30pm and last votes expected between 10:00—11:00pm. The House is set to repeal parts of the health care act, including the medical device tax. It will also continue consideration of the Homeland Security appropriations bill, and vote on a motion to instruct conferees on the highway bill. The House Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee marks up its FY2013 spending bill.