Continuing Resolution Extended with Final Action on Agriculture/FDA Expected Next Week
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled “Budget Angles: “Not All User Fees Are Alike” and “No Base, No Clarity”"
Continuing Resolutions Extended with Final Action on Agriculture/FDA Expected Next Week. Following an agreement by House and Senate leadership to extend the two Continuing Resolutions, this was accomplished quickly in the House and Senate. The House vote was 320-99 and the Senate vote was 77-13. Agriculture/FDA, Military Construction-VA, Energy-Water, Transportation-HUD, will be funded through March 8. The remaining eight appropriation bills will be funded through March 22.
Text of the Agriculture/FDA bill and the other three bills funded under this first CR is expected to be released this weekend. Floor action on these four bills and the Interior-Environment and Commerce-Justice-Science bills is now expected later this coming week (by March 8).
The Alliance will be reviewing the final FY 24 Agriculture/FDA bill and any accompanying explanatory statement to assess the impact on FDA. Once we have a completed analysis, we will prepare and release an analysis as soon as possible.
FY 2025 Budget Request Still Expected March 11. We continue to hear that following the President’s State of the Union address to Congress on March 7, his FY 2025 budget request will be sent to Congress on March 11. Some reports suggest that the submission on that date will be a “skinny budget” with further details (e.g. the lengthy Congressional Justification) submitted in the following days. Given the lack of the final FY 2024 appropriation bills, comparisons of the FY 2025 request with FY 2024 action will likely not be included in the President’s submission. The Alliance will work to provide this comparison as soon as possible. See today’s Analysis and Commentary on why the first “headline numbers” reported may not provide an accurate picture of the request.
Updated House and Senate Member FY 2025 Appropriation Request Information. House and Senate Members continue to release their individual office deadlines for the submission of FY 2025 appropriation requests.
Attached here (House) and here (Senate) are updated lists of those deadlines with links to the individual request forms. 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. Several offices have already revised their internal deadlines while others will not set deadlines or release request forms until after the President’s FY 2025 request is sent to Congress. We will continue to update these lists as additional information becomes available.
The Alliance will submit its FY 2025 recommendations to these offices. We urge Alliance members to also 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 any questions, please contact Roger Szemraj.
Did You Catch This Week’s Alliance Webinar on FDA Funding, the Appropriations Process, and the Threat of a Potential Shutdown? Nearly 200 members of the FDA stakeholder community attended our webinar this week with Alliance Executive Director, Steven Grossman, Alliance President Tom Kraus, Alliance Senior Advisor Phil Karsting, and Alliance board member Emily Holubowich. The webinar’s purpose was to prepare stakeholders for the finalization of the FY 24 appropriations process and the FY 2025 President’s budget request.
Given the threat of a shutdown, the speakers also devoted time to “what happens to FDA in a shutdown.” Here is what the Alliance told reporters that day:
“FDA has hundreds of responsibilities—overseeing products and services that are 21% of all consumer spending. On a good day for FDA, it all works and nobody notices. That’s threatened in a shutdown—only about 75% of the workforce will be available unless called back for a public health emergency.”
The recording can be found here and the summary can be found here. The slides presented during the webinar can be found here. The transcript will be posted on our website early next week.
This event was featured in the media: here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Two Upcoming Webinars
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.