Alliance for a Stronger FDA Hill Day, Tuesday, March 19th 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.
Alliance for a Stronger FDA Hill Day, Tuesday, March 19th. Please Save the Date. This year’s Alliance Hill Day will take place on Tuesday, March 19th. The Day’s activities will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a breakfast and brief orientation session at the Capitol Hill Club. Please RSVP by e-mailing Tony Curry and stay tuned for additional details regarding the day’s activities.
Meetings with Agriculture Appropriators. Next week the Alliance will continue its meetings with the staff of the House and Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committees regarding FDA funding in the sequester and the FY 2013 and FY 2014 appropriations cycles.
Alliance on BioCentury TV this Weekend. Alliance President Diane Dorman and past President Margaret Anderson will be on BioCentury This Week in a show called: “Sequester Arithmetic: Plan B for FDA, NIH.” It will be broadcast on Sunday, March 10 at 8:30 a.m. on WUSA Channel 9 in DC and on many PBS stations, as well as continuously available to be viewed on the BioCentury TV web site
House FDA Appropriations Hearing, April 11th and Opportunity to Submit Testimony. The House Appropriations Committee has scheduled a hearing on FDA’s FY 2014 budget for April 11th. As in past years, we expect only Commissioner Hamburg to be a witness. Written testimony can be e-mailed to the committee to arrive no later than the close of business on March 20, 2013. Please click here for additional relevant information.
House and Senate Action on the FY 13 Continuing Resolution. The Senate may start work on the House CR bill as early as Monday. The House has said it will not accept a bill back from the Senate that re-instates any significant amount of funds above the FY 12 levels in the House bill. It is possible that the Senate will insert the text of several full appropriations bills that were negotiated by House and Senate staffs late last year. Technically, this would make the legislation into an omnibus appropriations bill rather than a CR. This might provide FDA with an opportunity to receive funding above the FY 12 level. (The Office of Management and Budget or OMB has recommended +$24 million.) Any additional monies would be an increase to the post-sequester levels (i.e., additional monies would be intended to pay for new activities or costs, not to reduce the impact of sequester).
Confused about the CR and the Sequester? In the current environment, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Today’s Analysis and Commentary explains how the sequester and the CR relate to the different issues.
Updated Chart on Sequester Impact. We have updated numbers from OMB and the White House. This chart is an accurate representation of the impact of the sequester on FDA:
Sequestration FY 13 CR (to 3/27/13) Less sequester Net amount Budget appropriations $2.521 billion $ 126 million $2.395 billion User fees (including tobacco & generics UF) $1.647 billion $ 82 million $1.565 billion Totals $4.168 billion $ 209 million (rounded) $3.960 billion (rounded)