The House Appropriations Committee marked up and reported out their first FY18 spending bill this week and agreed to the interim 302(b) suballocation for the Military Construction-Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) spending bill. Instead of agreeing to 302(b) allocations for all 12 spending bills, the committee intends to bring up one bill at a time with an “interim” allocation that is an estimate of what might be available once a budget resolution is passed. The interim allocation for the MilCon-VA bill was approved on a party-line vote of 29 to 22.
The $88.8B FY18 MilCon-VA spending bill was passed by unanimous voice vote after the committee accepted a manager’s package and an amendment offered by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) that eliminates the waiver process for the hiring freeze for hiring of additional counselors for the 24-hour Veteran Crisis Line (VCL). The committee rejected an amendment offered by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) that would have prohibited the use of funds to establish the White House Veterans Complaint Hotline. Lee thought the new hotline was redundant. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) questioned the appropriateness of funding for this initiative to be in the MilCon-VA bill since it is a White House function. Lee’s amendment failed by voice vote.
The bill includes $2.1B more than FY17 funding levels for military construction and $5.3B more than FY17 funding levels for the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill is $573M less than the President’s FY18 budget request.
FY18 MilCon-VA Bill Text:
https://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/bills-115hr-sc-ap-fy2018-milcon-subcommitteedraft.pdf
FY18 MilCon-VA Report Language:
https://appropriations.house.gov/uploadedfiles/hrpt-115-hr-fy2018-milcon.pdf
FY18 MilCon-VA Summary:
https://appropriations.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=394909
On the Senate side, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) instructed appropriators to rely on spending limits from FY17 as they write their bills for FY18. McConnell said that these levels would then be adjusted once they reach a budget agreement. If no new budget deal is reached, they will be bound by the discretionary spending caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act.
While appropriators haven’t let the lack of an FY18 budget resolution stop them from doing their work, the timeline for getting one passed has been further delayed. The House Budget Committee this week postponed a markup of an FY18 budget resolution that was tentatively scheduled for next week.