By the American Council on Education (ACE) 

December 13, 2013
Budget negotiators Tuesday announced a bipartisan deal to set spending levels for the federal government through fiscal year 2015 and partially replace sequestration cuts with other savings. The House last night approved the measure 332-94, sending the bill to the Senate for its expected final passage.

House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) had until today to return a plan to Congress, an outcome of the October deal to reopen the federal government. The current stopgap funding measure is scheduled to expire Jan. 15.

The agreement—known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013—sets “top-line” spending and revenue figures for the next two fiscal years and partially replaces the sequester (the across-the-board spending cuts triggered earlier this year following prior failures to reach a budget agreement) with other cuts and non-tax revenues (such as higher retirement benefit contributions for some federal employees and an increase in airline ticket fees). Once the final budget is approved, the 12 appropriations subcommittees have until Jan. 15 to decide on specific funding levels for individual agencies and programs for the current fiscal year.

Specifically, for FY 2014, overall federal spending will be $1.012 trillion and for FY 2015, $1.014 trillion. The agreement replaces $63 billion in sequester cuts with a combination of other savings. The bill also includes an additional $22.5 billion devoted to deficit reduction.

On the higher education front, the deal is expected to go some distance to alleviate cuts to campus-based financial aid programs and federal research agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. This funding is currently in line for a second round of mandated sequestration reductions in January. The higher budget caps for both years should allow for the reversal of some damaging cuts, and should, at minimum, prevent any further cuts for the next two years. (Click here to read my Huffington Post piece on research funding and our country’s innovation deficit, and here to read our paper from earlier this year on sequestration’s impact on higher education.)

We sent a letter to the House yesterday ahead of the vote, supporting the bill as providing a measure of federal funding stability and a positive step toward reversing some of the detrimental sequestration cuts.

President Obama praised the deal as “a good first step” and said he will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.