December 2016
This weekend, the Senate passed a spending bill to fund federal programs until April 28, 2017. The spending bill was held up for a few days in the Senate where a group of Democratic senators tried to add a one-year extension of health benefits for coal miners is included in the bill. The final bill that was passed includes a 4-month extension of the coal miners health coverage.
The stopgap measure will allow congressional appropriators to complete work on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 spending bills in the new 115th Congress, after President-elect Trump and his administration take office. The spending bill includes a 0.1901% across the board funding reduction to all programs. It includes $352 million authorized for FY2017 by the 21st Century Cures Act, passed just this week, for the NIH's Precision Medicine, Cancer Moonshot and BRAIN initiatives.
