Compiled by SHANNON WELLS
During his presentation to Faculty Assembly at its Jan. 21 meeting largely focused on the Financial Accountability in Research, or FAIR, model, Mike Holland, vice chancellor for science policy and research, offered an overview of the Congressional spending bill process on which funding for Pitt and other research-based institutions hinges.
Since then, Senate Democrats and the White House have continued intensive negotiations to avert an extended partial shutdown of the federal government that could start Jan. 31.
On Jan. 30, Holland called the status of remaining appropriations bills “a very fluid situation.”
Congress approved three of the total 12 appropriations bill that fund the research portfolio last fall, leaving “minibus” packages working their way through the House and Senate.
On Jan. 22, the House approved a three-bill minibus appropriations package funding he departments of Defense, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education and other related agencies, The Hill reported. The bills do not cut research funding as drastically as the Trump administration had proposed.
A contentious Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, passed the House by a separate vote of 220-207. Democratic leaders opposed the bill as tensions flared in the wake of two recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
The House will combine the four bills with a two-bill minibus it passed last week and send the full package to the Senate, according to The Hill.
“There are four of the 12 bills where virtually all of the research portfolio was funded,” Holland explained on Jan. 21. “Obviously, Congress has to act as a … single, unitary thing. Bills pass the House, they pass the Senate, they have to conference, and then they go back for a final vote before they go to the president for signature.”
Holland said President Donald Trump has not issued veto threats over any appropriations bills.
“The president is basically committed to signing the bills as they come to him,” he said.
As of Thursday, Jan. 29, the Senate had struck a deal to prevent large swaths of the government from enduring a shutdown while allowing for negotiations to continue over funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), National Public Radio reported.
The plan called for the Senate to vote on five appropriations bills before the weekend, but not vote on the sixth bill, which funds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as currently written. Instead, they would vote on a separate two-week continuing resolution for DHS, NPR reported, allowing funding of various federal agencies, pending House approval, while buying time for negotiators to make changes to the DHS appropriations bill.
However, as Politico reported, the deal hit a snag Thursday night, when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) refused to go along with the plan, reportedly because of a House-backed provision repealing a law allowing cash payouts to senators whose phone records were seized by former special counsel Jack Smith.
As of late Friday morning, the House Rules Committee issued plans to meet Sunday, Feb. 1, at 4 p.m. to prepare floor action for the funding deal endorsed by President Trump, Politico reported. That would allow the chamber to pass the bill and send it to Trump sometime Monday, though despite notable obstacles to overcome.
In his Jan. 21 presentation, Holland explained the routine, yet often tedious process in securing federal research funding.
“Congress has to pass the spending bills,” he said of the package of 12 appropriation bills required annually to make the discretionary part of the government work. “And those get bundled together. Some of them move individually, others get bundled in little groups called minibuses. And sometimes when nothing is working, they all get thrown in in something called an omnibus.”
The Office of Management Budget (OMB) is focused on getting the president's agenda implemented through the budget and through regulatory mechanisms. “They own the uniform guidance,” he said, noting that the process of regulatory review has recently changed. “Historically, there's been a 90-day review period. (OMB) shrunk it to 28, and if they determine the action is deregulatory, it's a 14-day review.”
“It's like they've kind of been changing the rules on us in midstream.”
However, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which “sets the spending priorities for the Defense Department and the intelligence community,” Holland explained, gets translated into the Defense Appropriation Act.
Now signed into law, the act contains “blocking language that says the (Department of Defense) must use the prior system.
“Not only can they not change it in the near term, but if they are going to change it in the future, they must consult with us right now,” he said. “This one is a little bit of like, ‘We'll give the administration a little something and (they) give us a little something.’”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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