So you submitted an appropriations request… now what?
For the first time since 2011, the House and Senate allowed lawmakers to submit requests for funding projects in their district — a process previously known as “earmarks” — with some significant reforms to the old system. It has been a challenge for lawmakers, staff and the public to get familiar with the new system. The POPVOX Foundation and Bipartisan Policy Center have been working to curate and share information about the new program.
This post is written with Franz Wuerfmannsdobler of the Bipartisan Policy Center (Thanks Franz!), and will be updated as we learn more. Keep up with BPC’s research and resources on earmarks in the 117th Congress.
Congratulations! Your Community Project Funding grant request (House) or Congressionally Directed Spending request (Senate) made it through the thorough internal vetting process of the congressional office (House or Senate) and was submitted to the right subcommittee within either the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations. You may be wondering: what happens now?
In this post, we’ll walk through the timeline to expect, and how to track the progress of your request to see if it might be ultimately included in the final appropriations bill(s) for Fiscal Year 2022.
What happens next on my request?
There are several key phases in the appropriations process.
Phase 1: House and Senate Appropriations committees set deadlines for Member requests.
Phase 2: House and Senate appropriations subcommittees “mark up” subcommittee bills.
Phase 3: Those appropriations bills pass out of full committees in both chambers.
Phase 4: The full House and Senate debate and vote on appropriations bills on the floor.
Phase 5: Later in the year, conference negotiations reconcile versions of appropriations bills for final passage and the President’s signature.
It is important to note that every individual subcommittee bill must go through each phase every year. In an ideal budget world, each of these phases are completed by September 30, the start of the new fiscal year and the official deadline to fund the discretionary portion of the government. However, this is rarely the case: difficulties in resolving compromise versions push the process out into the late fall, and often well into the winter holidays. This necessitates the use of ‘continuing resolutions’ that maintain previously appropriated funding at prior levels for a short length of time.
How can I tell if my request was included in the final bill?
When the subcommittee handling your request has completed its own vetting and negotiation processes, the committee goes through a “markup,” where its draft bill and report, with included Member-directed spending requests, is discussed and edited by the subcommittee. When this markup is complete, the subcommittee releases the bill text along with the accompanying ‘report.’ This report includes important directions for agencies and programs within its jurisdiction as well as appropriations tables laying out how it has allocated funding by program and by Member. These reports will also include tables of member requests within accounts that were open for member requested projects.
Appropriations reports are published on Congress.gov, and the House is also releasing appropriations tables for CPF requests on its own website.
For more information on the steps involved with a markup and what information is available when, follow the excellent Demand Progress timeline.
After the House and Senate complete their versions of the appropriations bills, a conference committee negotiates and reconciles the differences. There are some open questions about how the conference committee will resolve some aspects of the new Member-directed spending programs (see below). However, the process of finding Member-directed requests in the report that accompanies a final spending bill is similar: once the Conference Committee has negotiated a final bill, often a ‘minibus’ or an ‘omnibus’ spending bill combining the bills from multiple subcommittees, a “Joint Explanatory Statement” (see here for an example) accompanying the bill will contain each subcommittee’s guidance, and tables of funding from both the House and the Senate.
Is there any way to tell if we will receive the full amount we requested?
Because this is the first year of Member-directed spending programs after a decade-long moratorium, there are still some big unanswered questions about how discretionary funding will be allocated. We’ll keep this page updated as we have more information, but here are some of the dynamics that will shape those decisions:
How much money is available for member requests?
To be determined. Estimates of 1% of federal spending for FY 2021 put the amount at around $14-$15 billion. However, as RollCall notes, House Members only requested $5.9 billion in CPF in the house in total, meaning that the Appropriations Committee may distribute significantly less than the proposed total. The splits between the Senate and House and distribution among the subcommittees and parties are still being determined.
How will member requested funding be divided among subcommittees?
Again, our friends at Demand Progress have some information on what we know so far (as of 7/2). Funding allocations (302(b)) for subcommittees are set by the full Appropriations Committee; the House’s 302(b) markup is scheduled for June 29th. Within that subcommittee-provided cap, the subcommittee will then direct a specific amount of funding to the accounts that were open for member requests. Note that the aggregate 1% cap was put in place across the entire appropriations committee and not each subcommittee. Further, member requests were not applied for two subcommittees in the House and three in the Senate.
How will money be divided between requests and between parties?
In the original announcements for CPF and CDS requests, both Chambers noted that Member-directed spending will be limited to 1% of discretionary funding overall. Both also initially noted that this funding would be evenly divided between Members of both parties. Data on House earmark requests shows that although fewer Republican Members submitted earmark requests, on the whole their requests were for larger amounts. Senator Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee originally suggested that, if the Senate Republicans formally allowed their conference to make such requests, then he was open to dividing funding evenly in the Senate. Given what is likely to be a significant discrepancy between parties in submitting requests, this question about the equitable party distribution has not been fully determined at this time.
Other questions?
This is a fast-evolving process, and a new one for many Congressional offices, organizations, and local governments who’ve submitted requests for the first time. Reach out at info@popvox.org if we’ve missed anything, and we’ll keep this post updated as we learn more.
