Legislative Update – February 22, 2022

FY 22 Appropriations & Omnibus Budget Negotiations Update

On Friday, President Biden signed a short-term Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government through March 11, 2022. The short-term CR is intended to give Congress more time to reach an agreement on FY22 Appropriations.

To that end, House and Senate appropriations subcommittees are currently negotiating aspects of 12 annual appropriations bills, which will be rolled into one giant Omnibus spending package for final passage, hopefully before the March 11 CR deadline. Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont shared that lead appropriators agreed upon an appropriations framework that will lead to the biggest increase in non-defense programs in four years. The agreed-upon Omnibus framework is expected to include earmarks from the Senate and House bills.

For SCSEP, the FY22 Omnibus Appropriations bill provides the opportunity for the SCSEP budget to grow on July 1, 2022, from its current $405 million to a new funding level. Both the House and Senate appropriators recommended funding increases for SCSEP for FY22: the House recommended $450 million and the Senate $410 million.

March 1st State of the Union and FY23 Appropriations

While currently in recess until February 28th, Congress has been invited to attend the March 1st in-person State of the Union address. Yet, the President’s FY23 budget is expected to be released several weeks after the State of the Union in hopes that, as reported previously, Congress will finalize FY22 Appropriations, and the Administration will have a baseline with which to compare their FY23 proposal.

Workforce related activities on the Hill and in the Administration

The Senate HELP Committee held a hearing last week on “Supporting Quality Workforce Development Opportunities and Innovation to Address Barriers to Employment.” You can view the recording of the hearing here:

https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/supporting-quality-workforce-development-opportunities-and-innovation-to-address-barriers-to-employment

We hear that committee members expressed bipartisan support for workforce programming.