Alliance Members Urged to Participate in Upcoming Hill Days
This week’s Analysis and Commentary is entitled “Escaping the Downward Budget Pressures in FY 25.”
Alliance Members Urged to Participate in Upcoming Hill Days. More House and Senate offices have agreed to in-person meetings with the Alliance. House offices will be on May 7 and 8, and Senate offices on May 15 and 16.
We strongly encourage Alliance members to join us for these visits. Please let Ben Dash know of your availability for any of these days. Non-members interested in participating should contact Steven Grossman.
The Alliance’s Hill Days are an opportunity to advocate for a strong, well-funded FDA and educate Congress about FDA’s expanding mission and growing responsibilities.
Broad participation from every stakeholder group and member organization strongly reinforces our unity about FDA’s funding needs and our commitment to two messages: “a strong FDA benefits all Americans” and “FDA’s growing responsibilities require a budget that grows.”
We also plan a round of virtual visits with both House and Senate offices on May 22-23.
More on Release of the Alliance’s FY 25 Budget Ask. The Alliance for a Stronger FDA announced its FY 25 funding ask (here) for FDA, calling for a budget authority (BA) appropriation of $3.896 billion for salaries and expenses (S&E). This is $214 million more than the President’s FY 25 budget request and $377 million more than the FY 24 funding level.
The Alliance’s request for FY 25 is consistent with its request from a year ago and reflects that the FDA’s funding needs have not diminished in the intervening time. The ask will be the central document in the Alliance’s Hill visits in May.
FDA’s BA (non-user fee) revenue remained essentially the same between FY 23 and FY 24, masking the challenge presented when agency resources are diminished by having to absorb pay raise increases and new initiatives without additional funding. The Alliance’s FY 25 “ask” covers further pay raise increases, while providing a broader view of the growing program imperatives facing the agency.
The Alliance believes that “the FDA’s growing mission requires a budget that grows. The American people are the beneficiaries of the continued investment in the agency and their needs are not met when the agency is underfunded.’’
Updated House and Senate Member FY 2025 Appropriation Request Information - Deadlines Imminent. Individual Member offices continue to release their personal office deadlines for funding requests. The Alliance will submit its FY 2025 recommendations to these offices and urges Alliance members to do the same.
Attached here (House) and here (Senate) are updated lists of those deadlines with links to the individual request forms. We will continue to update these lists as additional information becomes available. The House Appropriations Committee has just announced that Members must submit requests by close of business on May 1. The Senate Agriculture/FDA Subcommittee has announced that May 8 is the deadline for Senators to submit requests for the fiscal year 2025 appropriations cycle, including programmatic, bill, and report language.
We urge Alliance members to also respond to these offices with the message: FDA is a funding priority because of its role in protecting public health and advancing food safety and innovative medical products. We encourage you to look at our March 15 Friday Update for detailed information on the FY 2025 FDA request. Alliance members and others are welcome to ‘borrow’ from this template in making their own asks.
If you have any questions, please contact Roger Szemraj.
Summary and transcripts from FDA’s CBER Director Dr. Peter Marks are now available. The Alliance hosted Dr. Peter Marks, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Discussions surrounded vaccines, cell & gene therapies, personalized medicine, and blood & biological products. Find the summary here and the transcript here.
All summaries and transcripts from the Alliance Webinar Series and our other webinars can be found on our website here.
Register for the Alliance’s Annual Budget Series. There are three more budget webinars scheduled. The links to register are below: