Appropriations Watch: FY22 and FY23 Budget Cycles Collide
BREAKING NEWS: Shutdown Avoided, Budget Talks Continue
Congress narrowly averted a government shutdown by passing a Continuing Resolution (CR) just before today’s (February 18) deadline. In this post, we dive into how this impacts childhood cancer and some of the complexities around the fiscal year budget process, which is now heating up for Fiscal Year 2023 (FY2023) despite the unresolved status of FY2022.
The Long Journey Toward a Complete FY2022 Budget:
This latest Continuing Resolution is the third CR passed by Congress this fiscal year, each providing temporary (“stop-gap”) funding that keeps the government open but frozen at previous funding levels. Continuing Resolutions are sometimes necessary to buy Congressional negotiators extra time to reach an agreement on the final appropriations bills for the new fiscal year. But when over one-third of the fiscal year has passed without a new budget – like now – the endless cycle of stop-gap funding becomes a real and tangible threat to progress, especially in areas like cancer research, prevention, and treatment.
The latest Continuing Resolution funds the government through March 11, giving lawmakers three extra weeks to move forward and reach an agreement. Children’s Cancer Cause signed on to a recent One Voice Against Cancer coalition letter to Congressional Appropriations leaders, urging them to pass a complete spending bill as quickly as possible and outlining the threat posed by a “year-long CR.” The House-passed FY2022 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill and also the Senate version of the bill would provide increases for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – increases that would be wiped out by a year-long CR.
These bicameral, bipartisan FY2022 health appropriations bills also include the fourth year of full funding ($30 million annually) for the Childhood Cancer STAR Act and other pediatric cancer-specific initiatives.
“At [the National Cancer Institute], a freeze would force the Institute to cut the number of research project grants (RPGs) it awards in FY2022, because of biomedical inflation and the fact that much of its budget goes toward honoring multi-year commitments awarded previously. Already, while it awaits a FY2022 appropriations, NCI has reduced its payline for RPGs from 11% to just 9%,” OVAC writes. “RPGs are not the only component of NCI that would be affected by a year-long CR. Cancer centers, clinical trials, and Specialized Programs of Research Excellence would almost certainly face cuts if Congress cannot reach an agreement on FY2022 spending bills.”
Progress in childhood cancer research is almost entirely dependent on Federal funding, since developing new therapies for children is not profitable because childhood cancer is a comparatively small market. Over 90% of children and adolescents who are diagnosed with cancer each year in the US are cared for at a children’s cancer center that is affiliated with the NCI-supported Children’s Oncology Group (COG). Approximately 4,000 children with cancer enroll in a COG-sponsored clinical trial annually.
Stopgap measures keep the doors open but stifle progress in science and research by stalling long-term projects.
You can join us in asking Congress to resolve these uncertainties and pass a final budget without further delay, using the action alert on this page.
What about FY2023? A Brief Guide to Understanding Budget Cycles:
As the long overdue FY2022 budget process continues to unfold, the FY2023 budget process is already well underway. The Federal fiscal year runs from the beginning of October to the end of September, so FY2022 ends on September 30, 2022, and FY2023 begins on October 1, 2022.
For FY2023, the budget process timeline should go like this (spoiler alert: it is already off course!):
Fall of 2021: Federal agencies submitted their proposals to the president for review. Agencies made adjustments based on feedback from the White House and re-submitted.
*January 2022: The president includes a general outline of budget priorities in the State of the Union Address.
*February 2022: The president submits his budget request to Congress, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) submits its analysis of the request to House and Senate appropriations committees.
April 2022: Congress passes a budget resolution, which guides its decision-making and kicks off budget hearings across the 12 appropriations subcommittees. These hearings typically last into the summer.
June 30, 2022: This is technically the deadline for the House of Representatives to approve all FY2023 appropriations bills. This deadline isn’t usually met.
September 30, 2022: Deadline for both chambers of Congress to have passed (and the president to have signed) either the complete FY2023 budget or – more typically these days – a Continuing Resolution, to ensure that the government remains open when the new fiscal year begins on October 1.
*The FY2023 process is already behind schedule, as President Biden has not yet given his 2022 State of the Union address or released his budget request. The State of the Union address is scheduled for March 1st, with a budget expected to quickly follow – although it’s clear the White House hopes to first see the FY2022 process resolved first.
At Children’s Cancer Cause, we have been working closely with our coalition partners in the Alliance for Childhood Cancer, One Voice Against Cancer, and the Cancer Leadership Council to ensure that we are ready to mobilize around FY2023 funding levels and share our priorities with Congress as soon as the time comes. You can sign up for blog updates to stay informed about specific funding requests from the childhood cancer advocacy community in the coming weeks and months – and how you can help support these efforts by taking action from home!