July 10, 2006

HHS Appropriations in Limbo

The Labor/HHS/Education (L-HHS) appropriations bill-passed in Committee June 13-has yet to find its way to the House floor. The principal reasons: the minimum wage amendment and the low funding level. Many conservatives oppose the amendment to increase the minimum raise from $5.15 to $7.75 by 2009 and just assume strip it from the L-HHS bill. However, many moderate Republicans support the increase and, together with Democrats, would preserve the amendment. These are the same Republicans that, like Democrats, think the $141.9 billion afforded under the current bill is much too low and together may strike the appropriations bill down, altogether.

Conservatives-including those in the White House-are disgruntled that the bill includes $1 billion in earmarks and takes $4.1 billion from the Defense bill to increase funding for domestic programs. The president has threatened to veto an appropriations bill that significantly undermines the Defense budget and his priorities. There is no word on when the House will vote on the bill.

On the Senate side, the L-HHS appropriations subcommittee will be working with $142 billion for domestic programs, which includes an additional $5 billion for health, education and job training programs over the President's FY 2007 budget request.  The additional $5 billion for these programs would come from a total of $9 billion shifted from defense and foreign operations funds. The Senate appropriations committee is tentatively scheduled to markup July 20, though this seems unlikely given the July 4 recess and the lack of action to date in the Senate L-HHS appropriations subcommittee.

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