The House Appropriations Committee have released their 302(b) allocations, or spending ceilings, for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 spending bills, including for the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) bill. The LHHS bill contains the bulk of funding for health discretionary programs – think public health programs at the CDC, medical research at NIH, biodefense programs, etc. The House committee provides $150 billion for the FY 2013 LHHS bill. This is $7.7 billion less than what the Senate Appropriations approved last week and a 4% decrease from FY 2012 (see " Appropriations – This Is Getting Interesting"). Given that the LHHS bill is usually the most difficult spending bill for Congress to clear, a $7 billion dollar difference between House and Senate spending targets – not to mention real policy differences between the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-controlled Senate – is not going to make the job easier.
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