December 10, 2009

FY 2010 Appropriations Update

Late Tuesday, December 8, a House-Senate conference committee agreed to the $446.8 billion discretionary omnibus, which includes all of the remaining spending bills except Defense. The Labor-HHS-Education portion of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010 includes $163.565 billion, an $8.5 billion increase over fiscal 2009, a nearly $3 billion increase over the President’s FY 2010 request ($160.706 billion), and slightly higher than both the House passed and Senate committee versions ($163.4 and $163.1 billion, respectively).

The conference report, Managers’ Statement, and the Labor-HHS-Education summary are available on the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site.

The conferees provide AHRQ $397 million in FY 2010, including for the first time $23.6 million for investigator initiated research grants consistent with recommendations of the Coalition for Health Services Research. The conferees also provided NCHS $138.7 million FY 2010, which is a $14 million increase over FY 2009.

The bill also includes:

• $31 billion for NIH, with an estimated $806 million for health services research*
• $31.2 million for public health research at CDC
• $31 million for CMS
• $581 million for VA research, with an estimated $83 million for health services research*

(*Note: Amount for health services research is based upon what we expect HSR would receive if it maintains its current proportion of the overall agency budgets.)

The Managers Statement directs agencies to refer the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education reports for further guidance. As you may remember, the Coalition’s recommendations for spending were included in both House and Senate reports. These reports are available on the Coalition’s Web site.