Legislative Updates – July 1, 2024

FY 25 – House Subcommittee Advances Labor-HHS Bill

Despite a narrow margin, the House has been diligently advancing its FY 25 funding bills. The House passed three FY 25 funding bills on the floor earlier today, largely along party lines. The Defense bill passed 217-198, the Homeland Security bill passed 212-203, and the State Foreign Operations bill passed 212-200. The House has now passed four of the twelve FY 25 bills on the floor. The White House opposes all four bills, as indicated in their Statements of Administration Policy.

This week, the House passed five bills in Subcommittee, and has now passed all twelve FY 25 bills in Subcommittee. The House has passed six bills in full Committee, and has the remaining six bills scheduled for full committee mark ups the week after next.

The House Labor-HHS bill was advanced in Subcommittee yesterday. The bill provides 11 percent less funding than FY 24 enacted levels and is 15 percent below the President’s budget request. The Department of Education would receive a 13 percent overall cut, while DOL would face an even greater 23 percent reduction. The bill, approved by voice vote, will be considered by the full Appropriations Committee on July 10. The House Labor-HHS bill text is here, the House Republican summary is here and the House Democratic Summary is here. More details will be available when the Committee Report is released at full Committee markup.

The House Labor-HHS bill will be the low point of the FY 25 appropriations funding cycle. House leadership chose to reject the spending levels included for FY 25 in the bipartisan debt limit agreement negotiated by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, which would have provided a 1% overall increase for domestic programs. Instead, they have chosen to reduce overall domestic funding by $75 billion, which has resulted in severe cuts to Labor-HHS and other domestically focused appropriations bills.

Senate Appropriators are committed to maintaining the 1 percent increase in FY 25 at a minimum. There is interest, particularly on the Republican side of the aisle, in boosting defense related funding by as much as $55 billion over the levels in the debt limit agreement. Earlier this month, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bill that would exceed the defense spending cap by about $28 billion. However, Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) has indicated any increase for defense there must be parity in increases for domestic programs, which Republicans have rejected to date.

Senate Appropriations Chair Murray and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) have thus far been unable to negotiate a topline spending agreement. Sen. Murray has forged ahead, giving her Subcommittee Chairs their provisional allocations, though the allocations, which have not been made public, lack Republican support.

Labor-HHS is not expected to be marked up before the end of July at the earliest. There will be considerable more funding available in the Senate Labor-HHS bill than the House counterpart, a dynamic which played out last year and ultimately resulted in a reversal of the House’s proposed program eliminations and significant funding cuts. The good news is the House Labor-HHS bill’s massive funding cuts are highly unlikely to be part of any final package, as they will be opposed by both Senate Appropriators and House Democrats, though some individual programmatic cuts could survive.

Supplemental Funding Request

Today, the Administration submitted a supplemental funding request, including about $4 billion to address the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The request builds on the Administration’s domestic supplemental funding request from October 2023.

House Homeland Security Committee Hearing on Addressing the Cyber Workforce Gap

Last Wednesday, the House Committee on Homeland Security held a hearing entitled, “Finding 500,000: Addressing America’s Cyber Workforce Gap”. A recording of the hearing may be accessed here.

Court Rulings on Chevron Deference and Student Loans

On Friday, the Supreme Court overruled their landmark 1984 decision which required courts to defer to an agency interpretation of law if the statute was ambiguous and if the interpretation was reasonable. House Education & the Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) called the ruling a “major win”, while Ranking Member Bobby Scott (D-VA) released the following statement: “Without Chevron deference, we must rely on Congress or the courts to regulate complex policy issues, without the expertise or technical assistance of the agencies that are responsible for implementing the law. The issues at stake often involve very technical questions such as, what constitutes a significant risk to workers’ health from a cancer-causing chemical, what kind of job is too hazardous for children to be allowed to do, or how far a septic tank should be from a tree. We are now at greater risk of falling into politicized legal battles where in bad actors can use the courts to push their own political regulatory agenda.” Analysis of the ruling may be accessed here.

Last Monday, two federal judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that temporarily blocked some of the benefits of the Biden Administration’s income-driven student loan repayment plan, Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE), in which more than eight million borrowers are enrolled. In response, the Department of Education will suspend monthly student loan payments and interest for 3 million borrowers. The Administration will appeal the rulings.