Opportunities to Become More Involved with the Alliance 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.
Opportunities to Become More Involved with the Alliance. Two activities are upcoming. Please consider signing up:
Commissioner Gottlieb to Address Alliance on February 6. We have just a few spaces open for the Commissioner’s presentation to the Alliance membership in DC on Tuesday, February 6, at 4 p.m. Please RSVP to Carrie Morgan. This is a member event, so please contact Steven Grossman at if you are not a member and would like to be our guest at the presentation.
Alliance to Meet With Appropriators in February and March. If you would like to participate in the first round of Hill visits -- even for one or two meetings -- please let us know. We hope that a broad cross-section of Alliance membership will be available and we will let that group know when we have specific dates and times. To join this effort, please contact Eden Shiferaw
New CR Will Be Needed; No Clear Path for Resolution of Funding Issues. As predicted in last week’s Analysis and Commentary, Congress is unlikely to establish budget ceilings for defense and non-defense before February 8 and could not possibly complete appropriations by that date even if a budget agreement was in place. We do not expect a shutdown this time, although it can’t be ruled out completely because there has been no apparent progress on budget negotiations. As to the next CR, we have heard several dates discussed, with the longest being 5 weeks, ending on March 23. Proponents of increased defense spending are likely to look for a much shorter time frame because the Pentagon cannot spend these new monies until the appropriations process has concluded.
The President’s FY 19 Budget Request Scheduled for Release No Earlier than February 12. The President’s budget is thousands of pages, involving tens of thousands of numbers. With so much information released at the same time, a lot of things will be said that are confusing, misleading, or untrue. Corrections, if made at all, are likely to trickle out later, with limited visibility. Since a lot of this is predictable, this week’s Analysis and Commentary looks at some of the broad areas of misunderstanding, while next week’s will look at some of the foreseeable problems with what will be said about the FDA.