House Proposes Continuing Resolution and more
Advocacy at a Glance offers you the bullet point summary of current advocacy issues associated with the goals of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.
House Proposes Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund government from October 1, 2011 through November 18, 2011. Here are the details:
The CR would apply to the entire government and cover the first day of fiscal year 2012 through the Friday before Thanksgiving.
During this 7-week period, agencies could expend funds at a rate equal to their FY 11 appropriation minus 1.4%. (The Budget Control Act caps FY 12 expenditures at $1.043 trillion, which is 1.4% less than the comparable FY 11 spending levels).
Agencies cannot make major funding commitments if it would reduce Congressional discretion to later cut an agency budget. This applies to agencies that expend a disproportionate part of their budget early in the fiscal year and should not impact FDA.
Essentially, the House is proposing a “stand-still” agreement that buys time for the House and Senate appropriations committees to resolve their differences without either side making any commitments on specific programs and priorities. We expect the Senate to be agreeable to this approach. If further changes are made in the CR, it would likely be over disaster relief funding or other unrelated provisions, not to the CR funding formula.
Both the House and Senate are hoping to recess for the last week of September, so the goal is to have the CR completed and sent to the President by September 23. There should be no repeat of the drama attached to the FY 11 CRs, where there was the potential of a government shut-down for lack of funding.
Alliance Meetings with FDA Center Directors. This past week the Alliance held meetings with senior FDA officials to discuss the agency’s resource needs. Meetings were held with a with FDA’s Janet Woodcock, Director, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) and Karen Midthun, Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).