Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Senate appropriators' willingness to blow past budget caps is setting up a potentially heated battle over funding health agencies for FY25.
Why it matters: The friction increases the odds that HHS spending levels will remain relatively flat, as they were last year, as key lawmakers in both chambers hash out a grand bargain.
Driving the news: Senate appropriators agreed Monday to increase the amount of emergency spending in their FY25 funding bills to $34.5 billion, a committee aide confirmed to Axios.
- That likely will be an issue for House Republicans, because it veers from the spending caps agreed to in the Fiscal Responsibility Act last year.
- Senators would divide the extra sum between defense and nondefense spending, with defense getting $21 billion and nondefense receiving $13.5 billion.
- House Republicans have been crafting their bills in line with the spending caps set out in the debt ceiling deal, with most bills so far containing cuts to federal programs.
- The House Labor-HHS bill included a 7% spending cut to HHS from the FY24 levels but kept NIH funding flat.
Flashback: Last year, the House and Senate were similarly at odds, and HHS wound up with a slight funding bump in the second minibus.
- Negotiators then dropped extra emergency spending that Senate appropriators tried to add.
What they're saying: House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole told reporters Monday night that it's "a mistake" for the Senate to go above the FRA caps and that it wasn't helpful to the appropriations process.
- "We're not gonna go there in our original bills. We're gonna stay within the law. And that will be our opening negotiating position," he said.
- "So far, they haven't passed that much out of committee, let alone across the floor. So, and again, I'm not critical of that, but they've got to do more until we can actually sit down and negotiate."
- Cole did say he was open to increasing defense funding but didn't want a corresponding increase for the nondefense accounts.
Between the lines: The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to unveil its version of a FY25 Labor-HHS bill, but the thinking among appropriations experts is that as much as a third of the extra $34.5 billion would go toward Labor-HHS.
- Top Senate appropriators Patty Murray and Susan Collins added $6 billion in emergency funding for nondefense last year, and Labor-HHS wound up with about $2 billion, said Erik Fatemi, a principal at Cornerstone Government Affairs and former Senate Democratic appropriations staffer.
- "The Labor-HHS bill contains a lot of Democratic priorities, so Chair Murray will want to help its allocation as much as she can," Fatemi said.
- If that pattern holds this year, that would come out to an extra $4 billion or $5 billion.
- The 302(b) numbers for spending bills will be released Thursday by Senate Appropriations.
House appropriators, meanwhile, are marking up their Labor-HHS bill in full committee Wednesday.
- Beyond the topline funding cut for HHS, the spending blueprint calls for eliminating funding for Title X family planning grants and banning federal funds going toward gender-affirming care, as well as a large-scale reorganization of NIH.
What we're watching: The Biden administration is expected to threaten to veto the Labor-HHS bill, following its pattern with other House GOP-crafted spending bills this year.
