This week, the House is expected to move the FY2017 E&W bill on the Floor while the House Appropriations Committee is expected to mark up FY 2017 CJS and T-HUD bills in full committee and FY 2017 Interior in subcommittee.
The House FY2017 E&W bill provides a total of $37.4 billion in funding subject to discretionary caps for FY 2017 for the Energy Department and federal water projects, $259 million more than comparable FY 2016 funding and $168 million more than requested. On a programmatic level, after factoring out rescissions and other scorekeeping adjustments, it provides a total of $37.7 billion to the departments and agencies funded by the measure, $350 million more than the current level and $88 million more than requested.
Compared with current funding, the measure increases funding for the Army Corps of Engineers by 2%, nuclear weapons activities by 4% and fossil fuels energy research by 2%. It decreases funding for nuclear nonproliferation programs by 6%, the Bureau of Reclamation by 10% and research on renewable-energy programs by 12%.
Democrats object to several policy provisions, including those that would prohibit funding for certain regulatory activities and those that would require that water in Northern California be diverted south for agricultural and other uses. The bill is expected to be considered under an open rule.
More information about the House FY2017 CJS and Interior bill will be posted as it is made available.
Here’s a selection of articles the Federal Relations team is enjoying this week.
Chaos Ensues – The House floor devolved into chaos and shouting on Thursday as a measure to ensure protections for members of the LGBT community narrowly failed to pass after Republican leaders urged their members to change their votes. Read more at The Hill.
Choiceless – The $10 billion Veterans Choice program, created two years ago, was supposed to cut down on wait times and let veterans see private doctors, but now, the faltering program needs an overhaul as numbers, including waits, have skyrocketed. Read more at NPR.
Mo’ Money, But Still Less in Schools Than Before – the Center for Budgeting and Policy Priorities has a new report out on the trends of state support for public institutions. Though some states have begun to restore some of the deep cuts in financial support for public two- and four-year colleges since the recession hit, their support remains far below previous levels. In total, after adjusting for inflation, of the states that have enacted full higher education budgets for the current school year, funding for public two- and four-year colleges is $8.7 billion below what it was just prior to the recession. Read the report at CBPP.
SCOTUS Flag Pole Base (AOC)
STEM – The third annual U.S. News/Raytheon STEM Index, out this week, says the US is probably going to have to depend on foreign workers to fill future STEM jobs. The number of graduates who earned STEM masters’ and doctorate degrees rose by 6 percent in 2015. STEM hiring also increased, but there’s still a shortage of STEM workers. Read more at US News.
Alpha Trump – A controversial long-form piece on how Donald Trump has treated women who have worked for him, dated him, or just been in his orbit. Read it at the New York Times.
Legacy Building – The Administration is a flurry of activity as various agencies finalize a host of regulations— nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three — all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them. Read more at Politico.
Boom and Bust – The Corinthian Fifteen— students of the now defunct for-profit college who organized a “debt strike,” refusing to repay their student loans even at the risk of going into default—were among the millions of students who enrolled at for-profit universities during the last ten years. Students who went to these schools have come to account for a disproportionate share of the country’s unpaid student-loan balance; they also default at higher rates than other students. So theses student have been bearing a particular burden in the broader student-debt crisis, which has, since 2010, seen student loans overtake credit-card debt and car loans as the second-largest form of outstanding debt in the US. Read more in The New Yorker.
Due Process and Sexual Assault –Citing an erosion of free speech and due process on college campuses, a group of 21 law professors on Monday released an open letter alleging that the U.S. Department of Education has unlawfully expanded how colleges must define and respond to allegations of sexual assault and harassment. The same argument has been made frequently in recent months by Republican lawmakers who say that the department’s Office for Civil Rights illegally created new regulations through a series of documents instructing colleges how to handle cases of sexual misconduct. Read more at Inside Higher Education.
Potty Breaking the Federal Funds – The federal government says that as a condition of receiving federal funds, schools must comply with Title IX, which says schools may not discriminate based on a student’s sex. How would that impact state and local schools that receive federal funds? Read more at CNN.
Top 7– Justice Scalia’s absence continues to loom over the court in many ways. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court still has some vital cases on the docket, and no near term replacement to take the split from 4-4. Read more about the cases in Vox.
Majestic Squirrels – UC Berkeley researchers are researching the communication habits of squirrels, and apparently they’re a lot like us! They too get annoyed when you take their stuff away. Read more at Slate.
The House Appropriations Committee today released their FY2017 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations bill that would provide $56 billion, which is a 0.5 percent increase from current spending, and $1.4 billion over the Administration’s request.
In science related topics, NASA would receive $19.5 billion, which is a $223 million increase and $1.2 billion above the President’s request. The bill includes $5.6 billion for NASA Science programs – $8 million above the 2016 enacted level and $295 million above the Administration’s request. This targets funding to planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics to ensure the continuation of critical research and development programs, while reducing funding for lower-priority research.
However, the NSF would see a slight funding dip; it will get $7.4 billion, which is $57 million below FY2016 andl and $150 million below the Administration’s request. That said, NSF would receive a $46 million increase for research and related activities to $680 million, including funding for programs that relate to STEM education. Offsets for the increase are in targeted reductions to equipment and construction costs.
The legislation contains $5.6 billion for NOAA, which is $185 million below the enacted level and $268 million below the President’s request. Funding is targeted to important priorities such as the National Weather Service, which receives $1.1 billion – $12 million above the President’s request. The bill reduces funding in “lower-priority” NOAA activities such as climate research and ocean services.
Of note, the legislation also includes several conservative policy provisions, including a prohibition on the transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees into the United States, language designed to protect gun rights, and anti-abortion rights provisions. All provisions nearly guaranteed to warrant a veto threat from the White House.
The House is expected to consider HR 4904, the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week, and last night, in advance of that consideration, the Administration issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP) threatening to veto the measure. The White House objects to the NDAA saying the legislation for shifting billions in war funds to support unrequested base Pentagon programs, arguing the maneuver “attempts to unravel” last fall’s two-year budget agreement that raised caps on both defense and domestic spending.
The annual measure, which is required yearly to direct the Department of Defense on larger policy and operations, is no stranger to controversy. The House’s version of the FY2017 NDAA shifts more than $23 billion in war-related Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds to the Pentagon’s base budget and leaves enough funding to support military contingencies only through next April. The House Committees have previously used the OCO accounts as a means to circumvent the sequester caps, since the OCO accounts were expressly exempted from the Sequester.
Additionally, the House Rules Committee crafted a rule to remove a provision in the NDAA that requires women ages 18 to 26 register for the military draft without debate or a vote. The Rules Committee accepted an amendment by Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) to remove the provision and study the Selective Service System. In a procedural twist, Sessions’ amendment is “considered as adopted,” meaning the provision will be automatically stripped from the bill when the full House adopts the broad rule for debate Tuesday, as expected.
The White House issued a Statement of Administrative Policy (SAP) today threatening to veto the FY2017 T-HUD/Mil-Con package the Senate is expected to consider this week.
While, the language in the SAP does not link the veto threat to any particular policy provision in the bill under consideration, which is similar to the open-ended veto threat issued by the Administration as the Senate took up its first appropriations measure, the FY2017 E&W spending bill, the SAP criticizes “problematic ideological provisions” in the legislation, including restrictions on funding related to the Guantanamo Bay detention center.
