|
CONGRESS PASSES CONTINUING RESOLUTION
Last week, the
House and Senate considered and passed, H.J. Res. 52, a Continuing Resolution
(CR) to keep the Government running at current
funding levels until November 16, 2007. That is
the date by which Democratic leaders have
indicated they would like to complete all their
work for the year. However, another CR is
likely to be required before the Congress and
Administration are able to resolve their
differences.
The temporary spending
measure is needed because Congress has failed to
finish any of its 12 regular spending bills for
Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, which begins on October
1, 2007. The House passed all 12 bills, but the
Senate has approved only four. Under the
measure, spending through November 16 would fund
federal government agencies and programs,
including NIH, NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, the
Department of Agriculture’s National Research
Initiative and NASA, under the same terms and
conditions as the FY2007 appropriation.
Neither Congress
nor the President was interested in shutting
down the government. Therefore, Congress passed
a CR that did not include any controversial
items or new policy decisions that might have
resulted in a Presidential veto. The President
intends to sign the CR before October 1, 2007.
TOP OF PAGE
STATUS OF FY2008
APPROPRIATIONS BILLS:
FASEB’s Office of Public Affairs currently
tracks the appropriations for six agencies (NIH,
NSF, DOE, VA, NASA, and USDA). The CR funding
levels for each of these agencies will be at the
FY2007 level. Please see below for the status
of each agency’s appropriation:
|
Agency |
FY 07 Enacted |
President FY 08 Request |
House Passed |
Senate Action |
|
NIH |
28.9 |
28.6 |
29.7 |
(1) 29.9 |
|
NSF |
5.9 |
6.4 |
6.5 |
(2) 6.6 |
|
DOE (Office of Science)
|
3.8 |
4.4 |
4.5 |
(3)
4.5 |
|
VA (Medical and Prosthetics Research)
|
0.412 |
0.411 |
0.480 |
(4) 0.500 |
|
NASA (Science, Aeronautics,
Exploration) |
0.178 |
0.183 |
? |
(5) ?
|
|
USDA (National Research Initiative)
|
0.190 |
0.257 |
0.190 |
(6)
0.244 |
|
1. Full Committee Passed Labor-HHS-Ed
6/21/07 |
|
|
|
2. Full Committee Passed Commerce,
Justice, Science 6/28/07 |
|
|
|
|
3. Full Committee Passed Energy and
Water 6/28/07 |
|
|
|
4. Full Committee Passed
Military-Veterans 6/14/07 |
|
|
|
|
5. Full Committee Passed Commerce,
Justice, Science 6/28/07 |
|
|
|
|
6. Full Committee Passed Agriculture
7/19/07 |
|
|
|
TOP OF PAGE
INSIDE (The Beltway)
SCOOP–Jon Retzlaff, Legislative Director
Last week, the Senate
Appropriations Committee listened to Defense
Secretary Robert Gates testify in support of the
President’s FY2008 supplemental appropriations
request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At the hearing, Mr. Gates explained that the
Bush administration was requesting an additional
$42 billion for war-related expenses in FY2008.
The request increases to $184 billion the amount
the Bush administration is seeking for FY2008 to
finance military operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Therefore, to simplify, the
President is asking Congress to support the $42
billion supplemental request because he has
begun to realize that he didn’t ask for enough
money to support the wars when he submitted his
original defense budget request to Congress
(which was submitted during the first week of
February, 2007).
The irony here involves the fact that Congress
is unable to send nine of the twelve FY2008
appropriations bills to the President because of
his threats to veto them for including $22
billion more for non-defense, domestic
discretionary programs than was requested in the
President’s FY2008 budget request. The
additional $22 billion was inserted by Democrats
to increase our country’s investments in many
vital areas, including education, health care
and medical research. In fact, the President’s
FY2008 request for the FY2008 Labor-HHS-Education
appropriations bill proposed a cut of nearly $4
billion from FY2007 levels. During the current
appropriations cycle, Democrats reinstated the
nearly $4 billion in cuts and added $8 billion
for important health, labor and education
programs.
How this all ends is anyone’s guess, but it’s
safe to say that the current spending battle
between the two branches of government is as
divided as it’s been since the federal shutdown
of 1995. The President has drawn a line in the
sand at limiting total spending to $933 billion
in FY2008 and is receiving support from House
Republicans, who have been arguing all year that
they lost Congress by not staying true to their
principles, particularly on controlling
spending. Democrats are adamant that many
programs besides those related to defense,
homeland security, veterans and foreign
operations deserve to be supported. Therefore,
it’s extremely likely that we will be discussing
the FY2008 appropriations process well into
December, in spite of the fact that FY2008
begins this week (October 1, 2007).
TOP OF PAGE
PAGE 1 | PAGE 2
GO BACK TO OCTOBER 1,
WASHINGTON UPDATE |
