The major federal legislative task of crafting a series of spending bills that can be enacted into law has begun. Similar to previous years, the prospect of completing work by the end of the present fiscal year on September 30 does not appear to be especially promising. A more likely outcome is that a continuing resolution (CR) will be necessary to fund the federal government beyond the end of the fiscal year this coming September 30. Given that 2022 involves conducting a national election, all House members and one-third of Senate members will be campaigning with a hope of staying in office. The result could be that reaching agreement on the 12 annual spending bills will have to be postponed until a lame-duck session after the November elections.
No budget is in place this year because a budget resolution that sets overall limits in spending has not been adopted. That step should have been completed in April. Instead, a shortcut budget in the form of a deeming resolution was produced recently in the House of Representatives that provides for a spending cap of $1.6 trillion to be enforced when bills reach the House floor. That amount is enough to begin work on the one dozen separate pieces of legislation. The House Appropriations Committee then can use this overall number, known as a “302(a)” after its section in the 1974 budget law to divide it into a dozen “302(b)” subcommittee allocations. Apart from disagreements over defense and non-defense spending amounts, controversy also can be anticipated regarding how much the spending bills will contribute to increasing the federal budget deficit.
Typical battles occur annually regarding efforts to achieve parity between defense and non-defense expenditures, which led to many lengthy delays in finalizing legislation for the current fiscal year. The result was that comparable increases were provided in both the defense and non-defense accounts. It usually proves to be quite difficult to resolve such differences.
The House Appropriations Committee has updated its markup schedule with an aim of acting on each of the 12 spending bills before the end of June 2022. A plan is to bring plans to the House floor in July. Senate appropriators seem less inclined to proceed on a similar timetable. Members of that chamber can be expected to focus on total defense versus non-defense spending levels, with Republicans advocating for an increase in defense spending that exceeds the rate of inflation. Now that inflation is at its highest peak in several decades, it should prove highly challenging to reach an agreement on a spending package that aligns with that elevated level.
ASAHP belongs to the Health Professions and Nursing Education Coalition (HPNEC), which submitted outside witness testimony on May 26, 2022 to reiterate fiscal year 2023 funding priorities to the House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) Appropriations Subcommittee. The Coalition advocates adequate and continued support for authorized health professions and nursing workforce development programs. The subcommittee is encouraged to adopt at least $1.51 billion for Titles VII and VIII programs of the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA).