LegiStorm

Summary:

The Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill includes funding for approximately 30 agencies and entities. They include most of the Department of the Interior (DOI) as well as agencies within other departments, such as the Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture and the Indian Health Service within the Department of Health and Human Services. The bill also provides funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), arts and cultural agencies, and other entities. At issue for Congress is determining the amount, terms, and conditions of funding for FY2017 for agencies and programs within the bill. Because no regular appropriations were enacted before the start of FY2017, continuing funds were provided through April 28, 2017, under the Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2017 (CR; Division A, P.L. 114-254). The CR generally provided funding at the FY2016 level (in Division G, P.L. 114-113), minus an across-the-board reduction of 0.1901% for the period covered. Funding was provided for continuing projects and activities, under the same authority and conditions, and to the same extent and manner, as for FY2016. An earlier CR (Division C, P.L. 114-223), and P.L. 114-254, contained a total of 10 exceptions for Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies. These "anomalies" pertained to recreation fees, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, receipts from applications for permits to drill, presidential inaugural costs, certain EPA programs, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Indian Health Service. In earlier action, for FY2017, President Obama had requested $33.18 billion for the agencies and entities typically funded in the annual bill. H.R. 5538 (114th Congress), as passed by the House on July 14, 2016, contained $32.15 billion for FY2017, whereas S. 3068 (114th Congress), as reported by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 16, 2016, included $32.76 billion. President Obama's request would have been an increase of $250.6 million (0.8%) over the FY2016 total of $32.93 billion, including $700.0 million in additional, emergency appropriations for wildland fires. By contrast, both H.R. 5538 as passed by the House and S. 3068 as reported from the Senate Appropriations Committee would have provided lower appropriations than enacted for FY2016. The House bill was $779.3 million (2.4%) less than FY2016, whereas the Senate bill contained $163.6 million (0.5%) less than FY2016. The FY2016 appropriation, and FY2017 appropriations requested, approved by the House, and reported by the Senate Appropriations Committee, differed in a number of ways. For instance, only the President's request did not include discretionary appropriations for the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program, as the President proposed mandatory funds for this program. PILT compensates counties and local governments for nontaxable lands within their jurisdictions. The total amounts also represented different levels of funding for wildland fires on DOI and Forest Service lands, as well as varied approaches to providing funds. The President proposed a new adjustment to the discretionary spending limits in law for wildfire suppression, the House bill included funding for the FLAME Wildfire Suppression Reserve Accounts, and the Senate bill provided some wildfire funds as emergency appropriations. The FY2016 appropriation included FLAME and emergency funding, but not a discretionary cap adjustment. Other differences related to the amount of funds proposed for particular agencies. For example, whereas the President sought an increase in funds over FY2016 for EPA, the House and Senate bills provided lower funding. In other cases, the President, House, and Senate Committee proposed increased funds of varying amounts over the FY2016 level, as for the National Park Service, Indian Affairs bureaus, Indian Health Service, and Smithsonian Institution, among other agencies. In still other cases, decreased funds relative to FY2016 were included in the President's, House, and Senate Committee proposals, as in the case of the Forest Service.