MLA, AAHSL, and more than 660 organizations have written to the leadership of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees urging them to allocate as high a funding level as possible to Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education related agencies funding bills in Fiscal Year 2017.
At the beginning of the federal budget process each year, subcommittees, including the Labor, HHS, and Education related agencies subcommittees, are allocated a certain amount of funding under the full Appropriations Committee’s 302(b) allocation. These allocations are referred to as 302(b) allocations, and establish the cap on spending for each of the appropriations bills. The subcommittees themselves don’t determine the level of funding for each bill; they only determine how that money is spent among the agencies and programs under the subcommittee’s jurisdiction.
The organizational sign-on letter, prepared by the Coalition for Health Funding, urges lawmakers to commit to increasing funding levels in FY 2017 which will help expand medial research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
