In Brief
House of Representatives Enacts Debt Ceiling Deal with White House
Over Memorial Day weekend, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and President Joe Biden reached an agreement on raising the debt ceiling, mere days before the predicted “X date” of June 5, when the US will default on its debts. The resulting agreement, the“Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA)” (HR 3746), will roll back some of the proposed cuts and provisions in the House-passed “Limit, Save, Grow Act.” The House of Representatives voted in favor of this agreement by a vote of 314 to 117.
At the core of the deal is a suspension of the debt ceiling — currently at $31.4 trillion — until January 1, 2025. The bill would also divide discretionary spending into separate caps for defense and nondefense programs in fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025, and then sets an overall spending allocation for FY26 to FY29. Each year after FY24, capped spending would be allowed to grow by one percent. The bill also includes a sequester mechanism for the first two years of the agreement. Government funding for FY24 and FY25 would be automatically cut by 1 percent below current-year levels as part of stopgap funding needed to avert a partial government shutdown if appropriations bills don't become law by January 1. That effectively resolves the issue through the 2024 election, leaving it to the next president and the new Congress to deal with.
While the FRA cuts are not as steep as the ones in the “Limit, Save, Grow Act,” we will still see some significant impacts on researchers, discoveries, and tech transfer for years to come. This is especially visible when looking at the difference between the current Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates for R&D funding, and the estimated numbers that the FRA would suggest. By FY 2029, the last year the FRA proposes a discretionary cap, the U.S. will have underinvested by a little over $170 billion in R&D.
The White House released a list of agreed to recissions as part of the deal. The Senate must now act to pass this agreement and send it to the White House before Monday, June 5. The House will then proceed with regular order for the appropriations process and determine how spending for each of the twelve appropriations bills will look under this new deal.
Bertagnolli Nomination Facing Challenge from Sanders
The buzz around Monica Bertagnolli, MD being the presumed nominee to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH) started in late April, it came to fruition on May 15, when President Biden officially announced her nomination as the 17th director of the (NIH). Bertagnolli currently serves as the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at NIH, having been selected for that role by President Biden in August 2022. She is the 16th NCI director and the first woman to serve in that position.
The confirmation for a new Director of NIH falls under the jurisdiction of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chaired by Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Sanders has been been adamant that he will strongly oppose a nominee to a major federal health agency who is unprepared to significantly lower the prices of prescription drugs. To date, no confirmation hearings have been scheduled. If confirmed, Bertagnolli will replace Francis Collins, MD, PhD, who stepped down as director in December 2021.