Affordable Care Act Repeal

This week, key Congressional leaders stated that legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act is unlikely to be reported from the committees of jurisdiction until mid-to late February. The fiscal year 2017 budget resolution adopted by the Congress earlier this month set a January 27 deadline for two committees in the House and two in the Senate to send reconciliation legislation to repeal the health care law to their respective Budget committees.  The reconciliation instructions in the budget resolution direct Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce in the House, plus Finance and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in the Senate, each to report legislation cutting the deficit by at least $1 billion over 10 years.  The instructions are meant to be used to write legislation to repeal the health care law. Once they receive the legislation, the Budget committees are required to package it for consideration on the floor.

Fiscal Year 2017 Appropriations

As a reminder, the federal government is in a Continuing Resolution until April 28th, 2017.  An article this week outlines a brewing debate between Congressional members who favor additional defense spending and President Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Representative Mick Mulvaney (R-SC).  Members of Congress would like to increase defense spending and increase funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but would keep funding it as “off-budget” spending, as it historically has been.  Representative Mulvaney, however, has long been a proponent of including this war spending in “regular” budget and appropriations.  This would have dramatic impact on other spending, particularly if Congress was going to stick to previously-agreed to top-line budget cuts.  At a minimum, the push to increase defense spending and the President’s desire for a military build-up will likely wipe out the previous commitment to parity between defense and non-defense spending, meaning if one type of funding received and increase, so would the other.  If parity between defense and non-defense discretionary funding no longer holds, cuts to non-defense discretionary spending to off-set increases in defense spending would seem a strong possibility.

However, how much of this will happen in the fiscal year 2017 appropriations bills is unclear, particularly given the fact that Congress will need to address two fiscal years of federal funding in one calendar year and Congress has competing priorities.  Acknowledging this fact, this week Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), saying that Congress does have “a heavy non-appropriations agenda” (repeal of the ACA and tax reform, for example) which will likely leave little time to complete all 12 regular spending bills needed to fund the government before the start of the new fiscal year in October.  These comments do signal a strong possibility of a return to continuing resolutions that may bear little resemblance to whatever fiscal blueprint President Trump proposes.

Fiscal Year 2018 Budget Proposals

President Trump is expected to release his budget outline (also referred to as a “skinny” budget) on February 28th, the same day he will address the full Congress. This budget outline will likely propose top-line funding levels for the federal agencies, but is unlikely to go into details for each federal department.  As a result, there is unlikely to be mention of STD funding in this budget outline released next month.  A full budget proposal from the Administration is expected in April or May which will likely outline the President’s funding priorities for all federal departments.