July 2023

Throughout July, the House and Senate appropriations committee have considered bills to fund the government for the 2024 fiscal year (FY). As noted in the June AERA Highlights, the Fiscal Responsibility Act resulted from a bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt ceiling limit through January 1, 2025, while also placing caps on federal spending for FY 2024 and FY 2025. The budget caps for FY 2024, which begins on October 1, 2023, provide for $704 billion in non-defense spending.

The House and Senate appropriations committees are taking different approaches to producing spending bills for FY 2024. The House Republican majority has pushed to reduce spending to FY 2022 levels. The Senate appropriations committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and vice chair Susan Collins (R-ME) have committed to a bipartisan process. These approaches are reflected in the legislation and report language released thus far.

House and Senate LHHS Bills – Institute of Education Sciences and National Institutes of Health

On July 14, the House Labor, Health, and Human Services (LHHS) appropriations subcommittee marked up its FY 2024 bill. The bill text includes a reduction of $100 million, or 12.4 percent, to the overall FY 2023 top line of $807.6 million for the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). The amount is 18.8 percent below the top-line amount of $870.9 million for IES included in the president’s FY 2024 budget request. (The bill text only includes the top-line amount for IES.)

In addition to the cuts to IES, the LHHS bill includes significant proposed spending cuts for education overall, eliminating several key programs such as the Federal Work-Study program, and reducing funding for Title I by 80 percent.

The bill would also provide $44.6 billion in funding for the overall National Institutes of Health (NIH) top line, a cut of $2.8 billion from FY 2023. The bill proposes significant cuts to several of the NIH institutes, including a $139 million cut to the National Institute of Mental Health. The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) was one of a few programs that did not receive cuts in the bill, with the rounded level of $1.75 billion flat compared to FY 2023.

The full House Appropriations Committee had not scheduled a hearing to consider the bill prior to the August recess.

On July 27, the full Senate Appropriations Committee advanced its FY 2024 LHHS bill on a 26-2 vote. The bill includes $793.11 million for the IES top line, $14.5 million below the FY 2023 level of $807.6 million.

The Senate bill maintains FY 2023 levels for most IES programs, with a slight increase for Assessment and two program cuts—$5 million for the RELs and $10 million for SLDS. The following table includes details on the Senate bill compared with prior year spending and the FY 2024 budget request. PDF includes additional details.

Institute of Education Sciences (in millions)

The Senate report language includes some directives and recognition of efforts within IES, including updates on the implementation of recommendations from the 2022 reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, The Future of Education Research at IES and A Vision and Roadmap for Education Statistics reports, details on specific administrative expenses for the National Center for Education Statistics, an update on training and other IES programs related to data science, and a recognition of collaborative education research with NSF.

In addition, the Senate bill includes $47.2 billion in base funding for NIH, an increase of $265 million compared with FY 223, with an additional $1.5 billion included for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health (ARPA-H). The bill includes $1.76 billion for NICHD, representing a $10 million increase compared to FY 2023.

House and Senate CJS Bills - National Science Foundation

On July 13, the full Senate Appropriations Committee marked up and advanced its FY 2024 Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill. The bill includes $9.5 billion overall for the National Science Foundation (NSF), with $7.6 billion for Research and Related Activities (R&RA) and $1.23 billion for the STEM Education (EDU) Directorate. These amounts represent slight decreases compared to the base amount of $9.54 billion used as the base for FY 2023 in the CJS bill.

On July 14, the House CJS subcommittee marked up and approved the FY 2024 CJS bill, which includes $9.63 billion for NSF overall and $7.87 billion for R&RA, both slight increases compared to FY 2023. However, the bill would provide a little over $1 billion for the EDU Directorate, representing a cut of 19.2 percent that reflects the amount enacted in FY 2022. The full House Appropriations Committee had not scheduled a hearing to consider the bill prior to the August recess.

The House and Senate CJS bills represent amounts significantly smaller than those included in the president’s budget request. The following table shows the amounts included in each of the proposals.

National Science Foundation (in millions)

In addition to the proposed cuts, both the House LHHS and CJS bills include language that prohibit funding the implementation of activities that focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. The CJS bill also would prohibit funding for implementation of the 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy memo, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.” The memo provides for data and publications resulting from federally funded research to be made publicly available immediately upon publication.

Although details are still forthcoming on the House bills, Congress is moving forward to enact appropriations legislation prior to September 30, the end of FY 2023. Exerting additional pressure to complete FY 2024 appropriations is the January 1, 2024, deadline in the Fiscal Responsibility Act to enact all 12 appropriations bills; if this deadline is not met, a one percent across-the-board cut will automatically apply to all FY 2024 federal discretionary funding.