Congress Pushes To Extend Deadline on Funding Bill

On Wednesday, December 9, Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced a bill to extend the current continuing resolution (CR) by five days from December 11 to December 16. The stopgap bill is expected to come up for votes in the House and Senate sometime today, Friday, December 11, before the midnight when the current CR expires. 

 

The text of the annual appropriations bill is now expected to be introduced in the House on Monday, December 14. If there is significant agreement, votes are likely in the House and Senate Wednesday or Thursday of next week, after which both chambers are expected to recess for the Christmas break. House Republican leaders have indicated that they prefer to adhere to a rule requiring legislation to be made public for at least three calendar days before voting on it. The question remains, will they be able to get a bi-partisan agreement and meet their self-imposed deadline?

 

Negotiations are moving slowly, but leaders say they are getting closer to an agreement over which policy riders may be included in the final version of the appropriations bill. Sticking points range from rolling back environmental regulations dealing with clean air and water and climate change, financial regulations that resulted from Dodd-Frank, and campaign finance regulations. Also problematic is the effort by some to halt the Syrian refugee resettlement program. And despite Rogers' optimism, there is no evidence that these issues are closer to being resolved.

 

Some of this is the result of conservatives within the Republican caucus who will vote against the appropriations bill because spending levels are too high. This makes Democratic support that more important, which puts Democrats in the "driver's" seat on many of the provisions. Yet among the positive elements that might make the negotiations run more smoothly is that fact that Republican leaders decided not to defund Planned Parenthood in the omnibus or repeal the Affordable Care Act provisions that led to a 16-day government shutdown in 2013. Democrats also seem willing to agree to GOP demands that the country's export ban on crude oil end.

 

Despite some setbacks and some forward movement, we may not know until the CR is passed whether the president will sign it. The White House has made it clear that the president would only sign a stopgap measure if lawmakers simply needed additional time to move the omnibus package. The White House has been clear that if all that is holding up passage of an appropriations bill are a "set of ideological riders" the president will not sign the CR that will force a government shutdown.  

National Collaborative Releases 2015 Report on Horizontal Integration

APHSA's National Collaborative for Integration of Health & Human Services released the report, On The Road to Horizontal Integration: Results from APHSA's 2015 National Survey of Health and Human Service Agencies, which captures the findings of the 2015 survey of state and local agencies' horizontal integration efforts.

Over the summer of 2015, the National Collaborative surveyed agencies to further understand where public-sector agencies are on the road to service integration and data interoperability. The 2015 report outlines where organizations place their operations farthest in maturity and where additional work is needed toward progressing up the Human Services Value Curve. It also outlines national trends over the past two years since the initial 2013 national survey.

The report in full is available here.

OPRE Self-Sufficiency Technical Working Group Meets

 

On Monday, December 7 the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) held a meeting of its Welfare and Family Self-Sufficiency Research Technical Working Group (TWG). 

 

Representatives from the research, governance and practice fields were in attendance. The meeting was an opportunity to learn about and discuss the latest research in self-sufficiency.  The TWG meets twice a year to review latest research and how it blends with current practice. There was considerable discussion regarding workforce development and broader human services, current practice and the integration with research efforts.

 

Discussion focused around employment strategies, two-generation approaches to improving family economic security, behavioral science-informed research and implications for case management, and the challenges and opportunities in evaluating the Community Services Block Grant. More information regarding this work will be made available through APHSA publications in the future.

 

APHSA was represented by Rod Bremby, Connecticut's commissioner of Social Services and chair of the APHSA Leadership Council, as well as Todd Bland of California, president of APHSA's affiliate the National Association of State TANF Administrators (NASTA); Deborah Carroll, District of Columbia director of Employment Services; and Karla Aguirre, director of Workforce Development in Utah.