Advocacy at a Glance
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 Appropriations Committee Passes Ag/FDA Bill With $308 Million Increase. The House Appropriations Committee met this week to mark-up FY 19 funding for the Department of Agriculture and FDA. A summary of the bill is here; the text of the bill is here (FDA at pages 60-66); and the committee report is here (FDA at pages 61-76).
While there were a range of amendments offered on both USDA and FDA matters, only a few amendments were adopted. None of them appear to affect the FDA funding contained in the subcommittee bill. Under the bill, FDA’s BA funding would increase to $3.108 billion, a $308 million increase (11%) over its FY 18 base of $2.8 billion. The bill also providers $70 million for 21st Century Cures programs funded from the FDA Innovation Account (not BA). The Alliance’s press release expressed its appreciation to the House subcommittee and to Representatives Aderholt (chair) and Bishop (ranking member) for their support of the FDA. The Alliance provided additional details here and here.
The Committee has said that the entire $308 million increase in BA funding is for medical product safety initiatives. While the committee report provides more detail than we had last week, we cannot yet track the entire increase. This week’s Analysis and Commentary provides the information we have and a discussion of some of the initiatives that we know for certain that the House wants to fund.
- Senate Mark-Up Set for Tuesday, May 22. Senators Shelby (chair) and Leahy (ranking member) have announced the FY 19 mark-up schedule for the Senate Appropriations Committee. Ag/FDA subcommittee is slated to occur next Tuesday, May 22 at 10:30a. In the recent past the Ag/FDA subcommittee has had a pro forma mark-up toward the beginning of the week, then a full committee mark-up later in the week. Both House and Senate are working on timelines that call for rapid completion of the 12 bills in committee. It is unclear whether those bills will quickly go to the House and Senate floors or there will be a gap while a common calendar and strategy is decided upon. We know that the Senate calendar is jammed for the coming months and floor time will be hard to get.