Senate Passes Stopgap Funding Bill Blocking OMB Grantmaking Rule

Senators voted 90-6 early Saturday morning to pass a short-term spending bill that would keep federal agencies funded through Dec. 11. The bill includes a provision temporarily blocking the White House Office of Management and Budget from implementing its highly controversial proposed rule on federal grantmaking. The bill is not yet law, however. It will now fall to the House to decide if they will adopt the Senate’s bill, and keep OMB from finalizing its proposed rule. The House is currently in recess and will not return until after Labor Day.

Senate Democrats spearheaded the proposal to prevent the OMB from implementing its grantmaking rule with the support of Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-ME). In a July 6 letter to OMB Director Russell Vought, Collins called for multiple sections of the OMB proposed rule to be withdrawn. All Senate Democrats, led by Senate Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA), have called for a complete rescission of the rule.

Speaking on the Senate floor before the passage of the spending bill, Collins called for her colleagues to lend their support, highlighting the importance of the measure blocking the OMB proposed rule. “There have been nearly 500,000 comments on this proposed rule. The vast majority of them against the changes that are proposed. Mr. President, I don’t think in my time that I’ve been privileged to serve in the Senate, that I have ever seen a rule, a proposed rule, generate that many negative comments,” Collins said.

Following the passage of the spending bill, Murray issued a statement urging the House to “take this straightforward bill up and pass it as soon as they return to session.” Murray added she would continue pushing to block the OMB proposed rule once and for all.

What happens next

The House has already passed its own stopgap funding bill, which differs from the Senate version. The House version does not contain any language blocking the OMB proposed rule from going into effect and was deliberately drafted as a “clean, straightforward stopgap,” according to House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-OK). The House has passed all 12 appropriations bills out of committee, with three passing the full House, while the Senate has yet to mark up any of its spending proposals.

Whether the House will support the addition of language blocking the OMB rule from going into effect as part of the final stopgap bill is unclear. Republicans have already rejected two attempts by Ranking Member of the House Appropriations Committee Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) to prevent implementation of the OMB proposed rule through amendments during committee consideration of the Labor-HHS-Education and Homeland Security appropriations bills. If the House agrees to the Senate’s stopgap bill in its entirety, it can go straight to President Trump for his signature, but if they remove the OMB language, or change any other part of the Senate wording, the bill will have to go back to the Senate.

An uphill challenge for OMB staff

OMB’s proposed rule has sparked concern among researchers and lawmakers alike because it would give political appointees unprecedented control over research grants. Not only would political appointees have the final say in what does, or does not, get funded, they would also have the power to terminate active grants that do not align with administration priorities. The proposal received nearly half a million public comments, according to the Federal Register website. The true number may be much lower. Just over 65,000 comments have so far been made public.

Whether there are hundreds of thousands of comments or tens of thousands of comments for the OMB to review, office staff are facing a daunting challenge, said Stuart Shapiro, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, in an interview. “OMB’s never had a rule that had this volume of comments before,” Shapiro said, noting that OMB’s staff are already “very, very busy people.”

While OMB is required by law to take the public comments in response to its proposed rule seriously, the office does not have to do what they suggest, Shapiro said. Though the response to the proposed rule appears to be overwhelmingly negative, he noted that the public comment process is “not a vote” and OMB may proceed with implementing its proposed rule with few, if any, changes. However, if OMB does a poor job explaining why it did not adopt the changes the comments suggest, a court of law could find the office’s final rule arbitrary or capricious, then order its revision. Lawsuits seem likely over the proposed rule, regardless, given the volume of opposition reflected in the comments.