House-Senate Conferees Release Proposed Final Appropriations Bill

Late last night, the House-Senate conferees released the proposed final appropriations bill, applying to about a quarter of the government, including FDA. Note that this will become law only if: (1) it passes the Senate and House on Thursday or Friday and (2) the President signs the legislation. We have provided the links and the text for the parts relevant to FDA below. Further details and analysis will be provided on this web site tomorrow, or you can obtain it through the Alliance’s weekly publication, "Friday Update". If you  do not receive our Friday Update, but would like to, please contact Samantha Beard.The Alliance is extremely pleased with the conference bill and hopeful that it will become law shortly. We would note the following:

• The $269 million increase is just under a 9% increase. Both in number and percentage, this is the agency’s largest increase in a number of years.
• The usual expectation is that House and Senate will split the difference between their respective numbers. Instead, this is about $35 million above the mid-line, demonstrating Congress’ strong commitment to the agency.
• We are grateful to the appropriations committees, especially Ag/FDA subcommittees, for recognizing the importance of the FDA. They saw the needs and the opportunities for the agency to better serve the American public and they backed that with a considerable increase for the agency.
• We are also grateful for the Administration’s request, and particularly the leadership of Dr. Gottlieb. They started the FY 19 dialogue with a very large request and enumeration of specific areas for where the funding growth was needed. This set the tone for the year.

For more information about FY 19  FDA funding or related matters, contact Steven Grossman or Ladd Wiley.From Division B of the summary“Food and Drug Administration (FDA) -- $3.08 billion in discretionary funding for the FDA, an increase of $269 million above the FY 2018 enacted level and $103 million below the President’s budget request. Overall, total FDA funding, including user fee revenues, is $5.67 billion, which is $468 million above the FY 2018 enacted level and $52 million below the request.”Explanatory Statement of the House-Senate conferees (begins on page 123 of the PDF).The text of the FDA portion can be found here. Note that it has been re-formatted for clarity, but is the entire text.Bill language re FDA (begins on page 142 of the pdf).The text of the FDA portion can be found here. Note that it has been re-formatted for clarity, but is the entire text.