A Senate panel on Thursday advanced a massive spending bill that almost fully funds Obamacare, and doesn’t include many of the proposals Republicans have pushed in the past to restrict funding for the controversial healthcare law.
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 29-1 to advance a health and education spending bill that mostly maintains funding for Obamacare and provides a $2 billion boost for the National Institutes of Health over current funding levels.
The only exception is that it strips funding for the Independent Payments Advisory Board, or IPAB, which was designed to find ways to cut growth in Medicare spending. But the IPAB hasn’t started its work yet, and has been criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because it would bypass Congress to impose cuts.
Obamacare funding has been a contentious part of the appropriations process for years now. Back in 2013, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz orchestrated a government shutdown to combat Obamacare funding, but so far this year, there is no threat to that funding in the bill other than the IPAB cut.
Democrats cheered the bill, noting that it was the first bipartisan spending bill in seven years for the Department of Health and Human Services.
The spending boost for NIH will bring the research agency’s budget to about $34 billion. The Senate is also trying to include additional funding boosts as part of a biomedical research package that the House passed last year.
Senators also added $76 million to programs improve prescription drug monitoring and expand prevention and treatment options for people struggling with opioid abuse. The House and Senate both passed comprehensive legislation aimed at tackling the opioid abuse epidemic.
“It is far from the last step we need to take on this front,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The bill is part of an effort by Congress to return the appropriations process to regular order, under which Congress will try to pass 12 major spending bills that fund the government. Congress almost never gets the job done, however, and usually ends up passing either a giant omnibus spending bill, or a continuing spending resolution, or a combination of the two.
