FY 24 Agriculture/FDA Appropriations Bill May - or May Not - Move by March 1
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled “5 Things to Know About the FY 24 Appropriations Endgame.”
FY 24 Agriculture/FDA Appropriations Bill: May - or May Not - Move by March 1. Negotiations continue on the four appropriation bills - Agriculture/FDA, Military Construction-VA, Energy-Water and Transportation-HUD - that are funded only through March 1. Reportedly, there are agreements on almost all the funding amounts, but the particularly difficult policy rider issues have been bumped up to House and Senate leadership.
The Ag/FDA bill is known to have an unresolved rider concerning FDA policies on access to the abortifacient mifepristone. At an earlier point in the process, it was said that the House didn’t have the votes to pass Ag/FDA with this rider nor enough votes to pass it without the rider.
There also appear to be ongoing negotiations to address a substantial funding cliff in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) which could result in eligible individuals not being able to obtain services.
FY 24 Ag/FDA Appropriations Process: Procedural and Floor Time Concerns. Roll Call reports that time for completion is running short with the House not returning to session until Wednesday, February 28. It is possible that final agreement will not be reached on all four of these bills, meaning either another short term Continuing Resolution will be needed or a limited shutdown could occur.
How these bills will be handled on the House floor to ensure support for passage is also yet to be determined. The House Freedom Caucus sent a letter to Speaker Johnson writing: “If we are not going to secure significant policy changes or even keep spending below the caps adopted by bipartisan majorities less than one year ago, why would we proceed when we could instead pass a year-long funding resolution that would save Americans $100 billion in year one?"
While the calculations are complicated and subject to interpretation, it is estimated that a full-year CR would require a 9.5% cut in domestic spending.
House and Senate Offices Begin Accepting FY 25 Funding Requests. As we reported in last week’s Analysis and Commentary, individual House and Senate offices are beginning to accept FY 25 programmatic funding requests even before the President’s budget request is submitted. We continue to hear that the President’s request will be sent to Congress on March 11, following his State of the Union Address on March 7.
A current list of House and Senate office deadlines with links to their forms can be found here and here, respectively. Our lists focus on members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, the Senate HELP Committee, and the Health Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. We will continue to update the list as additional information becomes available, including any revisions to due dates.
Please respond to these offices with the message: FDA is a funding priority because of its role in protecting public health and advancing food safety and innovative medical products.
If you have questions about the process or the message, contact Roger Szemraj of the Alliance staff.
Three Upcoming Webinars
February 28, 2 p.m. ET on FDA Funding and the Appropriations Process. Register here. Congress intends to finish the FY 24 Ag/FDA appropriations process by March 1 and the President will release the FY 2025 budget request in mid-March.
To prepare stakeholders and reporters, this Alliance webinar will have three presentations and plenty of time for Q&A moderated by Alliance board member Emily Holubowich:
“How FDA is Funded” Alliance Executive Director, Steven Grossman (former Senate and HHS);
“How FDA Prepares Its Budget” Alliance President Tom Kraus (former FDA chief of staff); and
“Understanding the FY 24 Endgame and the FY 25 Process” Alliance Senior Advisor Phil Karsting (former Senate chief of staff and former Administration official).
If a shutdown is still a possibility at the time of the webinar, the panel will speak to the consequences for FDA.
March 8, noon ET with Jim Jones, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods. Register here. Deputy Commissioner Jones was our guest in November of 2023, reviewing his early days in the new post and discussing the challenges and his priorities (transcript here).
This generated enormous interest in his plans to advance food chemical safety. In response, Deputy Commissioner Jones agreed to another webinar focused exclusively on this topic.
Alliance board member Alison Bodor (American Frozen Food Institute) will be introducing the program. Board members Tom Gremillion (Consumer Federation of America) and Caitlin Boon (Mars) will be the co-moderators.
March 8, 3 p.m. ET with Nicole Verdun, Head of the new CBER Office of Therapeutic Products. Register here. Last year, CBER created the Office of Therapeutic Products, combining multiple offices to pool resources and expertise. It is one of three so-called “super offices” within FDA.
The new Office Director, Nicole Verdun, will be our guest at a March 8 webinar to discuss how the office came about and the opportunities and challenges she faces as its first director.
Alliance board members Mary Dwight (Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) and Cartier Esham (Bio) will be co-moderators.
Alliance Webinar Challenge. By our calculation, the two March 8 webinars have completely different stakeholder audiences.
Alliance Executive Director, Steven Grossman, has offered to buy lunch for any Alliance member who has legitimate business interests in both and plans to attend both (note: must be an Alliance member).