The Alliance Continued Hill Days with Virtual Meetings Last Week
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled “‘Hurry Up and Wait’ and Other Appropriations Questions.”
The Alliance Continued Hill Days with Virtual Meetings Last Week. The Alliance thanks those members who participated in our House and Senate Hill Days in May.
Last week, teams of Alliance members met with staff of nearly 15 members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. In prior weeks, we visited 32 House offices and 17 Senate offices.
What the Alliance Told Congressional Offices. The Alliance’s recommendations for FDA’s FY 25 budget were presented, focusing on the need for additional resources to adequately fund FDA’s growing responsibilities. Teams included stakeholders from every part of FDA’s stakeholder community, including food, medical products, and veterinary medicine.
We continued to hear of strong support for FDA but also concerns about restrictive 302(b) allocations that will make increases difficult. The diversity of the Alliance team and the unified message about FDA’s needs were expressly recognized in several meetings. We encouraged each office to consider the Alliance as an ongoing resource.
More about what we heard on Hill days can be found at: Three Things We Heard in House-side Meetings and Three Things We Heard in Senate-side Meetings.
Tentative Schedule for House Consideration of the Agriculture/FDA Appropriations Bill. As we previously reported, the House Subcommittee markup is scheduled for Tuesday, June 11. The full committee markup is scheduled for Wednesday, July 10. The bill is expected to be taken up by the full House during the week of July 22.
The House Appropriations Committee on May 23 approved interim 302(b) allocations, which provide the discretionary spending limits for each bill.
Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) during this session said: “Like last year, final 2025 spending bills will be the product of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate. And we can either do that now, or we can squander another summer on bills that will never see the light of day. ... (T)he Chair’s allocations that we are considering today slash nondefense funding by more than $67 billion compared to where we were just two months ago.” The Committee also approved the first FY 25 appropriation bill - Military Construction/Veterans Administration - by a vote of 34-25.
The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill will have a discretionary allocation of $25.873 billion. According to the House Appropriations Committee, the FY 24 enacted bill had a total discretionary allocation of $26.228 billion. That is a reduction of $355 million.
The Senate still has not set its 302(b) allocations, nor has it announced a markup schedule. We will provide additional information as it becomes available.
FDA’s Human Foods Program Reorganization Approved. On Thursday, FDA announced the approval of its reorganization creating a unified Human Foods Program. The reorganization implementation is currently targeted for Oct. 1, 2024.
According to FDA’s announcement, the reorganization realigns the functions of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, the Office of Food Policy and Response, and key functions from the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) under one program. The FDA is changing the name of ORA to the Office of Inspections and Investigations (OII).
The formal notice of the reorganization will be published in the June 3 edition of the Federal Register. An advance copy of this notice can be found here.