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Home > Federal Relations > Federal Relations Report

Federal Relations Report

November 2009

Health care reform runs the legislative gantlet
New Web site highlights ARRA-funded research
Appropriations creep toward a conclusion…next year
On Campus and on the Hill

“December is the new October in Congress.”

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, dismissing concerns in September that financial regulation legislation had been deferred until October, when Congress was originally set to adjourn.

Lawmakers’ timelines are notoriously theoretical, and this year health care reform has loomed so large that the rest of Congress’s agenda has been in a permanent shadow. As health care has slipped through the seasons, a major climate change bill has been re-slated for Senate consideration in the spring and the annual appropriations process for the current federal fiscal year–theoretically supposed to be done by September 30–has been slowed considerably.

In those trudging FY10 appropriations bills are modest boosts for science and higher education priorities. [Those small increases reflect lawmakers’ acknowledgment  that research accounts already received a major, one-time infusion of research and financial aid dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) passed in February.] Right now it appears extremely unlikely that any further economic stimulus legislation would include either research funding or help for students, but the struggling economy is pressuring elected officials to act in unexpected ways.

One troubling storm cloud on the horizon is recent news that the Obama administration, in preparation for creation of the administration’s FY11 budget, has asked all domestic agencies to model flat funding or even a 5 percent cut, signaling a very tight fiscal environment. For the research university community, the central focus will be ensuring that the Obama administration and Congressional leadership live up to their commitments to basic research and increased higher education attainment.

Health care reform runs the legislative gantlet

The House has passed a comprehensive health care reform bill, and the Senate now has a proposal melded from two committee drafts being debated on the floor. At recent national gatherings, research university leaders have been careful to take a broad view of the legislation that takes into account the societal benefits of health care reform as well as the potential impact of reform on their institutions.
University of Minnesota federal relations staff and the national higher education associations have been monitoring developments that might affect research universities as employers, health insurance providers, homes to academic medical centers, and large nonprofit enterprises that are vulnerable to federal tax and revenue changes.

Here’s a sampling of issues that were articulated recently by an Association of American Universities (AAU) task force on tax issues and college costs:

• • the number of Medicare graduate medical education slots

• • the potential impact of expanding Medicaid eligibility on state funding for public universities and state student aid programs

• • the financial impact on universities and their employees of a tax on so-called “Cadillac” health plans and a potential cap on health care flexible spending accounts

• • the potential reimbursement rates of a new “public option” health insurance plan and proposals to peg them to Medicare rates

• • the potential phase-down or elimination of disproportionate share (DSH) payments made to hospitals

• • proposals (not yet included in either bodies’ bills) to cap itemized deductions as a way to help pay for health care reform

• • potentially onerous guidelines governing comparative medical effectiveness research under a proposed new funding agency, including possible restrictions on publishing and future funding

• Senate leaders have signaled they hope to have their health care reform bill passed sometime between Thanksgiving and the winter holiday break. The Senate’s 60-vote threshold to invoke cloture combined with the majority’s party’s headcount–58 Democrats and two independents–creates a real hurdle for any controversial bill.

Former Majority Leader Tom Daschle compares lining up Senate votes to “loading frogs on a wheelbarrow because the trick is to get 60 frogs on the wheelbarrow, all at the same time, before they jump off, and that is a process that is extraordinarily complex and laborious.” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has signaled that he does not plan to use arcane parliamentary procedure called “reconciliation,” which would allow a health care bill to open and close debate with a simple majority.

Any Senate health bill that passes would then move to a joint House-Senate conference committee to resolve differences and then back to each house for final vote. Just as it has up until now, each ensuing step for health care reform is likely to require extraordinary political capital on the part of the Obama administration and Congressional leaders. No doubt there will be plenty of frog wrangling in the months to come.

New Web site highlights ARRA-funded research

On Nov. 17, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Reps. Rush Holt (D-NJ), Bart Gordon (D-TN), John Larson (D-CT), and Bill Foster (D-IL) joined leaders from leading research universities in highlighting scientific research made possible by ARRA. The centerpiece of that event was a new Web site (www.ScienceWorksForUS.org) that highlights Recovery Act-sponsored research in all 50 states, telling the stories of the research and the researchers contributing to America’s recovery.

Gordon, who chairs the House Science and Technology Committee, encouraged science advocates to build on the success of the ARRA bill and the America COMPETES Act, which set the stage for enhanced investment in science in order to help America’s economic competitiveness. “We’ve got to get the band together again,” he said, referring to the coalition of industry and education leaders that helped pass COMPETES in 2007.

For her part, Speaker Pelosi reiterated that robust science funding was a centerpiece of her legislative agenda and of President Obama’s. When asked by a reporter about the funding “cliff” that will occur when the two years of stimulus funding runs out, the Speaker said that “falling off a cliff was not what we had in mind, but we did give a giant boost [to the competitiveness agenda]…. We are very aware that we have to sustain the effort or increase it, and no one knows that better than the president of the United States.”

Those remarks provided some hope for advocates for federal research funding in light of other, less hopeful signals, such as the Office of Management and Budget’s recent directive that domestic agencies must model flat or declining budgets as they develop their FY 2011 budgets.

On a related note, earlier this month several key higher education associations joined with other organizations in urging the administration to increase funding for research and development in the FY11 budget. The two letters, one from the Task Force on American Innovation, the other from AAU and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, ask the Administration to give science and engineering research high priority in the budget as areas of federal investment that are most likely to provide the greatest long-term return to the American people.

Appropriations creep toward a conclusion…next year

The Senate approved its version of the FY10 Military Construction-Veterans appropriations bill on Nov. 17, bringing to nine the number of FY10 appropriations bills the chamber has passed this year. Still outstanding in the Senate are Financial Services, Labor-HHS-Education (includes NIH and student financial aid), and State-Foreign Operations. The House has approved all 12 of its bills. Five bills have been enacted, with three still in House-Senate conference committees: Defense, Transportation-HUD, and Commerce-Justice-Science (includes NSF).

According to CongressDaily, Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) said he expects an end-of-year omnibus appropriations package to include no more than four of the FY10 spending bills—Financial Services, Labor-HHS-Education, State-Foreign Operations, and Defense, which likely will serve as the legislative vehicle.

On Campus and on the Hill

On October 12, President Bruininks joined Senator Al Franken for a news conference on the Minneapolis Campus to highlight proposed changes to the federal student loan program and increases to the Pell Grant. Sen. Franken also met with student leaders to talk about how students finance their education in an era of rising tuition.

On the same day, Senator Amy Klobuchar gave the second annual David A. Rothenberger, M.D. Lecture, hosted by the University of Minnesota Medical School Department of Surgery. Her keynote touched on health care reform efforts currently being debated in Congress. In November, Sen. Klobuchar visited Prof. Doug Yee's laboratory to learn more about his research into the pathways of breast cancer. She and Dr. Michael Osterholm also hosted a November 13 campus discussion on flu vaccine availability and federal vaccine policy in light of widespread shortages of seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccines.   

Congressman Oberstar was on campus on November 12. During his visit, the Congressman toured two intelligent transportation systems labratories that are operated by the Center for Transportation Studes.

On October 26, staff members from the congressional offices received a briefing at the Academic Health Center Congressional staff at AHC briefing.  Their itinerary included a stem cell lab, a medical imaging facility and a preview of the Medical Biosciences Building.

Representative Betty McCollum spoke to a Freshman Seminar on the St. Paul Campus on November 12. Professor Paul Porter’s seminar touches on food security issues and biotechnology, and, among other topics, Rep. McCollum provided an update on the Global Food Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 3077) for which she is a lead sponsor.

In Mid-November, Senior Vice President Frank Cerra made visits to congressional offices on Capitol Hill to give a status report on work at the AHC to staff working on issues related to health care and research.

Office of Technology Commercialization Director Jay Schrankler briefed Minnesota delegation offices on proposals for patent reform and their potential impact on University technology commercialization.

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