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News and updates

News and updates

In Other Appropriations News…

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As expected, the Senate took up and passed last night its version of the first three-bill “minibus” package by a vote of 86 to 5. The vehicle contains the FY2019 Energy and Water, Military Construction-VA, and Legislative Branch spending bills.  With the House having passed the same set of bills earlier this summer, the bills now will proceed to conference.

The Defense spending bill is expected to make its way through the Senate committee process this week, with subcommittee action expected this morning and full committee consideration scheduled for Thursday.  Meanwhile, the House committee-approved Defense bill is expected on the House floor later week.

We will continue to provide updates.

 

 

Progress and Delay on Labor-HHS-Education Bill

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The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to take up today its FY2019 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.  The legislation funds, among other agencies and programs, those that support biomedical research and student financial aid, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Pell Grants.  The committee markup, however, has been postponed until after the July Fourth recess. While Republicans are citing scheduling issues as the cause of the postponement, Democrats are claiming that the delay is due to Republican concerns about amendments that will likely be offered by Democrats to address family separation issues during the markup session.

As it stands, the current version of the legislation, the details of which are available here, would hold the Pell Grant maximum steady at $6,095 while funding the program at $22.475 billion overall.  With respect to other financial aid and higher education programs, Work Study would receive $1.13 billion while TRIO and GEAR-UP would be funded at $1.01 billion and $360 million, respectively.  SEOG would also bevlevel funded at $840.0 million.

International Education-Title VI programs and the Institute for Education Sciences would be held level at $72.1 million and $613 million, respectively, by the House bill.

On the biomedical research front, NIH would see an increase of $1.25 billion under this bill and would receive $38.33 billion.  The Health Resources and Services Administration would receive $6.54 billion under this bill.

On the other side of the Hill, the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to take up its version of the FY2019 bill later this morning.  The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation on Thursday, when it is also expected to consider the Defense spending bill.  The Office of Federal Relations will report on the details as they become available.

 

 

Senate Seeks to Pass “Minibus” This Evening

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Earlier last week, it was expected that the Senate would pass its version of the first “minibus” spending package for FY2019, composed of the Energy and Water, Veterans Affairs, and Legislative Branch bills, by the end of the week.  Late last Thursday, however, as a result of drawn out debates on partisan amendments related to “Waters of the U.S.” regulation and funding for the “veterans choice” program, the Senate leadership decided to postpone further debate on the measure until this week.  The Senate is scheduled to take up the package again later this evening.

Although floor action on the spending package was postponed, the Senate appropriators continued to make progress in committee last week, as they approved three more spending bills:  Homeland Security, Financial Services and General Government, and State and Foreign Operations.

More action on the appropriations is expected this week as Appropriations committees in both chambers are scheduled to take up their respective versions of the Labor-HHS-Education spending bill this week.

Administration Releases Proposal to Reorganize Agencies

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Earlier today, the Trump Administration released a plan that it had been developing to reorganize federal agencies.

Called “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century,” the plan calls for a number of sweeping changes to a number of different federal agencies, including combining the Departments of Education and Labor into a single agency.  Among the other changes being proposed is a call to move all federal Graduate Fellowships to the National Science Foundation.

This plan is the culmination of a directive issued by the White House Office of Management and Budget after Mick Mulvaney was sworn in as its director at the beginning of the Trump Administration in 2017.

Many, if not most, of the proposals called for in the plan will require Congressional approval.

We will continue to monitor developments and provide updates.

Administration Issues “SAP” on Senate Minibus

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The Senate is currently working on its version of the first “minibus” spending package that was cleared earlier in the spring by the House, a measure that contains three of the 12 spending bills for FY2019:  Energy and Water Development; Legislative Branch, and Military Construction-Veterans Affairs.  In anticipation of its passage, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the legislation, which often highlights provisions and/or policies of particular interest to the Administration in office.  A copy of SAP is the here.