House Appropriations Mark Requests No Funding for 2006 for GPE Program

APA Public Policy Office: June 19, 2005

House Appropriations Mark Requests No Funding for 2006 for GPE Program

On Thursday, June 9 at 9:30am the House Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee marked up the Fiscal Year 2006 bill. For quite some time we have heard from numerous Hill sources on and off the Subcommittee that this year's bill would be particularly difficult, for two principal reasons: 1) The 302(b) subcommittee allocation established by the Budget Resolution represents a $163 million cut from the previous year's enacted levels; and 2) While funds are already squeezed, mandatory spending is scheduled to increase by $106 billion (or 30% from last year's level) due to funding obligations produced by the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) passed in the 108th Congress. Approximately $900 million of this funding counts against the Subcommittee's discretionary allocation.

Unfortunately, these predictions and assessments of Hill staff were not blown out of proportion in this year's mark. Some 50 federal programs were terminated in the FY'06 bill. The NIH allocation of $28.5 billion represents an increase of 0.5 percent, the smallest increase in 36 years. The legislation also contained some fairly controversial rescissions including $125 million in unspent New York state emergency response funds for workers' compensation costs, $125 million for the Bush administration's signature community college initiative and $100 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. More bad history was made in that the measure also eliminated advance funding for public broadcasting for the first time in history.

Among numerous others, Title VII programs in the Bureau of Health Professions fared very poorly in the mark. In fact, only one line in the entire Title was funded at all – scholarships for disadvantaged students was level funded. GPE and the entire Allied Health and Other Disciplines line was zeroed out, along with every other program including Geriatric (funded at $31 million in FY'05) and Primary Care Medicine and Dentistry (funded at $88 million in FY'05). The widespread cuts were applied across the board to BHPr, an agency that traditionally relies on Congress to restore significant amounts of funding not requested from the Administration and OMB. Attached in Adobe Acrobat format is the page from the table showing just what they did in black and white.

Discussions with Senate staff indicate that additional funds may be made available through the use of forward funding and other accounting maneuvers, a move that would free up resources to restore many of the cuts proposed by the House. We will continue monitoring these discussions, but should the Senate decide to go this route, it will go a long way toward helping our situation. They employed similar tactics last year, which resulted in a nearly $3 billion delta between the House and Senate bills going into conference.

In the final analysis we continue to enjoy strong support from our well-placed friends in both chambers. The House mark does not represent anything more than a decision to de-fund all Title VII programs (including a high personal priority program of Chairman Regula) to meet other funding obligations established by MMA and the Bush Administration so that the bill meets the discretionary spending cap. It is important to note that the decision was not made based on the quality of the programs. It seems unlikely that the House could seek to maintain their position on Title VII in conference, as there are just too many programs at stake.

Over the course of the next few months we will work extremely hard to restore GPE funding in the Senate, then double back with our House friends to ensure they recede to the Senate position in conference. It will take a significant team effort, but the battle can (and must) be won!