FY17 Appropriations Update – June 3, 2016

FY17 Appropriations

House

The House will take up its FY17 Legislative Branch spending bill on the floor next week, but will employ a structured rule for the measure in order to have more control over the amendment process. Speaker Ryan signaled before the Memorial Day recess that the floor procedures for future spending bills would be less open due to contentious amendments slowing down or, in the case of the FY17 Energy and Water spending bill, stopping the process. The Legislative Branch appropriations bill is already causing some consternation among Democrats by the inclusion of report language that directs the Library of Congress to use the term “illegal alien” instead of “unauthorized immigrants” or “non citizens.”

Senate

The Senate has managed to pass three of the 12 annual appropriations bills, and has five more ready to go to the floor. Next week, they are poised to consider the FY17 Defense spending bill after completing action on the FY17 National Defense Authorization Act. In committee, they will mark up the FY17 Labor HHS Education bill in subcommittee on Tuesday and full committee on Thursday.

Zika Virus Funding

Even during the recess Republican and Democratic leaders kept trading barbs over emergency funding to combat the mosquito-borne Zika virus. Speaker Ryan called out Democrats in an email saying that there is no funding shortage and there has never been one. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) responded with the number of confirmed Zika cases in the U.S. Over on the Senate side, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) promised to act on the Zika issue quickly, while Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that Democrats will force Republicans to vote again against full funding for the Zika virus.

To recap where we currently stand, the President requested $1.9B from Congress in February for fighting the Zika virus. The House passed a $622M Zika supplemental appropriations with offsets of $352.1M of unused money for fighting the Ebola outbreak and $270M in other unused funding for the Department of Health and Human Services. And the Senate passed a bill with $1.1B in Zika emergency funding. The House and Senate now need to conference the two measures. Before the recess, the House voted 233 to 180 for the rule allowing them to go to conference with the Senate. In addition to the overall funding level (the Senate appropriated $1.1B), one of the bigger issues conferees will have to address is whether or not the emergency funding requires a “pay for” or “offset.” The House justified its lower funding level saying that additional aid would come as part of the regular FY17 appropriations process. The Senate now needs to agree to go to conference.