Negotiations on Final Agriculture/FDA Appropriations Bill Moving Ahead
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled “FY 24 Funding Is Not Settled; Yet FY 25 Is Coming Soon.”
Negotiations on Final Agriculture/FDA Appropriations Bill Moving Ahead. With an agreement on 302(b) subcommittee allocations, negotiations on the final Agriculture FDA/Appropriations bill can move ahead. The actual allocation has not been publicly announced.
House Subcommittee Ranking Member Sandford Bishop (D-GA) reportedly said “it’s a bump” in Ag/FDA spending but not as much as he wanted. If indeed there is an increase in monies available for Ag/FDA programs, that does not assure that FDA will receive that bump. Among other things, the Ag/FDA subcommittees will be evaluating how much additional monies will be needed for the WIC feeding program.
What Comes Next in the Congressional Process. The Alliance is hopeful that Congress can meet the March 1 deadline for FY 24 Ag/FDA funding. The agreement on subcommittee allocations does not preclude continuing disagreements over funding levels for specific programs nd does not affect the existing disputes over policy riders.
House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) believes that the two CR deadlines of March 1 and March 8 can be met. Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has said that Republicans will need to agree to set aside fights over policy riders.
Between now and March 1, the House and Senate both have significant recess time scheduled. This is not an impediment to negotiations but could affect availability of floor time to move funding bills.
Upcoming Event in the Alliance Webinar Series:
Kimberlee Trzeciak, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Legislation, and International Affairs, February 8 at 3 p.m. Register here!
Alliance board members Emily Holubowich (American Heart Association) and Nancy Myers (Catalyst Health Care) will be the co-moderators.
You can also find all the transcripts & summaries of our past Alliance webinars on our website here.
Did You Catch This Week’s Alliance Webinar with FDA Commissioner Dr. Califf? Nearly 300 members of the FDA stakeholder community attended. The transcript can be found here and the summary can be found here.
This event was featured across the media, including: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Is FOIA an FDA Resource Question? Agency IQ referenced a government chart (here) that looks at FOIA workloads and clear rates for the HHS agencies. CMS receives the most FOIA requests. FDA is second with about half the number of requests received by CMS. Most agencies have a backlog despite a clear rate almost equal to the number of new requests that come in each quarter.
What’s notable is that FDA has the largest backlog by far (4578 records) despite clearing almost as many requests as it receives.
Interviews and Tributes: Janet Woodcock on the Occasion of Her Retirement. There is no bigger supporter of FDA than Dr. Janet Woodcock. She has spent 37 years at the agency and has been a senior leader for a quarter century. She retired on January 31.
The Alliance and its members thank Dr. Woodcock for her many appearances as a speaker at Alliance events and for her early recognition that the Alliance’s support for FDA is valuable. We will miss her and wish her well in her next endeavor.
Starting with her farewell post on the social media platform X, here are some interviews and tributes to Dr. Woodcock: RAPS and STATnews.
Refresher on the Appropriations Process. The FY 24 process started nearly a year ago and we can’t be certain it will be over on March 1. It can be hard to keep track of what happens and what is supposed to happen. Here is a quick primer, with thanks to the Coalition for Health Funding.