Congress Returns September 9; Continuing Resolution Needed
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled: “Establishing Reasonable Expectations for the First FY 25 CR.”
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September 27th at 11 am EST Register here
Congress Returns September 9; Continuing Resolution Needed. The House and Senate resume session on Monday, September 9. The main focus for September will be passing a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government starting on October 1. This week’s Analysis and Commentary describes how this might be a difficult process. Meantime, we do not expect either the House or Senate to consider the FY 25 Agriculture/FDA Appropriations bill this month.
House May Consider a Continuing Resolution through March. According to various news reports, Speaker Johnson (R-LA) plans to introduce a CR that will fund the government through March 2025. This is consistent with previous reports that the House Freedom Caucus wants to stretch a CR into the 119th Congress, where they hope to have a Trump Administration and majorities in both the House and Senate.
Purportedly, the CR offered by Speaker Johnson will exclude the side deals agreed to by Speaker McCarthy and President Biden as part of last year’s budget deal. It will also include the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote in a federal election. House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has already expressed her opposition to any limitation on the CR and to the SAVE legislation.
Senate Action to be Determined. The Senate has not yet released a CR proposal. Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) has said, “Senate Democrats will continue to work in a bipartisan way to ensure we can keep the government funded and deliver responsible, bipartisan spending bills that can actually be signed into law before the end of the [fiscal] year.”
Administration Submits List of Anomalies for the Continuing Resolution. Every CR includes some “anomalies,” which are provisions that address circumstances where a clean CR would not produce a sensible result. An example would be the need for the CR to extend Farm Bill program authorities since they otherwise expire on October 1. The Administration has released its list of requested anomalies for the upcoming CR (here). As is usually the case, no anomalies are requested for FDA, or for the food safety programs administered by the US Department of Agriculture.
What the House and Senate Currently Provide for FDA in their Committee-passed FY 2025 Bills. Both the House and Senate Appropriation Committees have passed their own versions of FY 25 Agriculture/FDA funding bills, (HR 9027 and S 4690). The table below offers what the Alliance considers as starting points for each body.
The House bill did not identify any particular budget authority increases for individual activities and the overall funds that would be provided are $22 million less than in FY 24.
The Senate bill would increase FDA funding by $22 million and specifies an increase of $1 million to conduct oversight of cosmetics; an increase of $15 million for food safety; an increase of $3 million for the Neurology Drug Program; $2 million in new funding for the recently announced Tobacco Task Force; and $1 million more for antimicrobial research.
The committee reports offer further detail regarding specific actions the House and Senate Committees would like FDA to follow. That information is extracted in a searchable format for you here: House (FDA section & funding section) and Senate (FDA section and funding section). The full reports can be found in House Report 118-583 and Senate Report 118-193.
Opportunity to Hear From Dr. Michelle Tarver and Dr. Jeff Shuren. Dr. Shuren has just announced his retirement and Dr. Tarver is the new Acting Director of CDRH. They will appear on a virtual town hall meeting on September 24, from 1-2 p.m. The program is sponsored by the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS) and is open (and free) to the entire FDA stakeholder community. Registration information is here.