Now that the current fiscal year is going to draw to a close on September 30, greater attention is being paid to Congressional appropriations. The House Appropriations Committee plans to mark up the 12 annual spending bills for fiscal year 2022 in June this year, ahead of floor votes that are scheduled for this July. Recent years have witnessed a failure to complete all necessary business pertaining to appropriations by the coming October 1. If that pattern repeats itself this year, then one or more stopgap spending measures will have to be relied upon as a means of avoiding a federal government shutdown of the federal government.
A new twist in the present arrangement goes to prove that many old and highly cherished notions truly die rather hard. While certain revered ideas can languish for lengthy periods of time, they can reappear with renewed vigor as evidenced by the rebirth of “earmarks,” an excellent illustration of a time-honored approach of dispensing funds appropriated by Congress. Earlier, wags with a penchant for unseasonable japery could hardly wait for former Democrat Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin to issue his Golden Fleece Award every month between March 1975 and December 1988. The purpose of this dubious honor was to acknowledge “wasteful, ridiculous or ironic use of the taxpayers’ money.” A famous example was a $190 million bridge to a sparsely populated island in Alaska at a cost of $13,786 per local inhabitant.
House Democrats recently unveiled a plan to restore earmarks under the new heading, “Community Project Funding,” thus ending a decade-long policy that forbade the practice. A proposal released by Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, would allow the inclusion of money in annual spending bills to benefit specific projects with the amount capped at 1% of discretionary spending, Lawmakers would be permitted to submit a maximum of 10 project requests, along with evidence to justify their requests from their communities. Funds could not be allocated, however, to benefit for-profit recipients. Joining in this renewal effort, the House Republican Conference has voted to restore earmarks and Senate appropriators also have released their plan to jettison the present ban.
Apart from the important work of introducing and passing necessary legislation, another key function performed on Capitol Hill is to conduct hearings. The Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor & Pensions did so on May 11, 2021. The event on “Efforts to Combat COVID-19” featured testimony by Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; David Kessler, Chief Science Officer at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Rochelle Walensky, CDC Director; and Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food & Drug Administration. The following day, a hearing on the topic of “COVID-19 Variants and Evolving Research Needs” was held by the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Testimony was provided by experts from Columbia University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Argonne National Laboratory.
Statements made at both hearings can be obtained from the websites of these committees in print and video formats.
More May 2021 TRENDS Articles
MINISCULE CREATURES OF HUGE IMPORTANCE
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A MAJOR FOCUS ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING
describes early attempts to appropriate funds for the upcoming next fiscal year, the return of “earmarks,” and key hearings on Capitol Hill regarding COVID-19. Read More
HEALTH REFORM DEVELOPMENTS
refers to how overuse of tests and procedures in the Medicare program contributes to wasteful spending; Biden administration efforts to reverse policies of the previous administration; and expansion of some provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Read More
DEVELOPMENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
is about the financial impact of lockdowns on colleges and universities; the effect on students of remote instead of in-class learning; and proposed legislation on student loan tax elimination. Read More
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Medicare, Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program Enrollment: 2020
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Improving The Utility Of Evidence Synthesis In The Face Of Insufficient Evidence
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IMPACT OF MARRIAGE, DIVORCE, AND WIDOWHOOD ON HEALTH STATUS
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COGNITIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY, INTELLIGENCE, HEALTH, AND DEATH
pertains to how an understanding of the association between intelligence and health/mortality has been refined with the advent of new, population-scale data and genetic tools. Read More Read More