The House Appropriations Committee will kick off its markups of FY20 spending bills next week with the Labor-HHS-Education and Legislative Branch measures all going before their respective subcommittees. The Labor-HHS-Education bill will be marked up in subcommittee April 30, and in full committee on May 8. The Military Construction-VA and Legislative Branch bills will be marked up in their respective subcommittees on May 1. The committee is expected to approve suballocations, known as 302(b)s, for the 12 spending bills at that May 8 full committee markup.

The Appropriations Committee also is looking at marking up the Defense bill soon, though no date has been set. Energy-Water also could be one of the first several bills to be marked up.

House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) is writing the bills to the $664B defense limit and $631B nondefense limit as the House adopted on April 9 an informal “deeming” resolution (H.Res. 293) that sets an overall discretionary topline of $1.295 trillion.

FY2020 Appropriations Bills Status

Earlier this week House Democrats on the Budget Committee released the text of their draft bill to raise the discretionary spending caps for FY20 and FY21 by $356B. The bill sets the FY20 defense spending cap at $733B and the non-defense spending at $639B for FY20. 

The House Budget Committee met on Wednesday and approved the bill by a vote of 19-17. All of the votes in favor of passage were from Democrats while three Democrats joined all 14 Republicans in voting against the measure. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) all voted against the bill because it raises defense spending caps. The bill could be on the House floor next week, but it will have a tough time getting passed, and it isn’t likely to be considered by the Republican-controlled Senate. But it serves as a starting point for negotiations on raising the spending caps for FY20 and FY21.