March 4, 2011—President Obama has signed a two-week temporary spending bill for the federal government that cuts roughly $400 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration’s (HRSA) budget.
Funding for the Office of Pharmacy Affairs (OPA) remains steady at $2.2 million under the bill, which expires on March 18. The millions erased from HRSA’s budget were for congressional earmarks for health care facilities and services, which ranged from $10.25 million for a state university to $60,000 for a women’s health center. Congressional Republicans campaigned last fall on a pledge to end all earmarks. President Obama also called for the cuts in HRSA’s budget in his spending plan for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
With the earmarks gone, HRSA’s fiscal 2011 budget falls from $7.47 billion to $7.07 billion
The President invited House GOP leaders to meet with their Senate Democratic counterparts and Vice President Biden to hammer out a plan to keep the government funded through Sept. 30. The Republicans, however, said they were going to wait for the Democrats to put a plan of their own on the table first.
House Republicans passed legislation in late February that would reduce government spending for the rest of this fiscal year by about $60 billion below its current level. If the two sides fail to strike a deal, the government will be forced to close.
With Congress preoccupied with funding for the current year, there has been no significant action yet on the President’s proposed budget for fiscal 2012. The White House has proposed lifting OPA’s budget to $10.2 million, half of which would be financed by a new user fee on 340B purchases.