Diving Deeper: Deciphering Senate and House Priorities for Ocean Funding
With Emily Patrolia
Where We’re at with Ocean Funding
Last Thursday night, the Senate Appropriations Committee released details for its fiscal year 2025 (FY25) spending bills to fund key ocean agencies, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management (BOEM), and the Maritime Administration (MARAD)*. Combined, these agencies fund and manage most of the federal government’s ocean-related science, research, education, management, and industry support.
*Note: Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers are missing here. The bills that fund those parts of the government are expected to be released this week, so stay tuned! Don’t forget to check out our tracker for an update on where each bill sits in the FY25 process.
The Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate will have to agree on funding levels before they can send a spending bill to the president’s desk — and right now, they’re pretty far apart. If you missed it, check out our Diving Deeper analyzing the House bills.
The House bills received no support from Democrats while the Senate bills were reported out of committee with bipartisan support. This means the Senate has a stronger starting point when it comes to negotiations.
Key Ocean Priorities, Differences, and Opportunities in the House and Senate Funding Bills
Let’s take a closer look at the House and Senate bills’ overall themes and what they might tell us. I’m going to spend a little more time diving into NOAA since it’s one of the biggest ocean players in our government. Time to nerd out on some numbers.
*Note: For the true NOAA budget hawks among you, we’re combining ORF and PAC lines here.
Overall, we’re seeing modest increases proposed by the Senate and cuts to NOAA proposed by the House — this tracks with House Republicans’ priorities to decrease domestic spending. Pay attention to trends: where do the two chambers generally agree (highlighted green) or majorly disagree (highlighted red). This is where the numbers tell a story of fundamentally different policy priorities.
Major disagreements: The House and Senate are set up for a fight over funding NOAA fisheries and NOAA satellites. The House proposes major cuts to the science and management and ecosystem science programs. The House is also rejecting NOAA’s request for additional funding for satellites—the general thought here is that encouraging NOAA to get the data it needs through partnerships with the private sector or other agencies will lead to savings. The Senate provides a boost for fisheries across the board, especially for data collection and surveys. The chambers agree on the need to boost funding for regional fishery management councils.
Same page: weather, ships, and airplanes. Both chambers want to see investment in NOAA’s National Weather Service, as well as in recapitalization of the NOAA Corps fleet of planes and ships, which does everything from fisheries surveys to hurricane data collection.
Key themes from both bills: more data and better technology in partnership with the private sector. It’s clear that both chambers and both political parties want to see NOAA collect more observational data, lean into innovation and new technology (especially uncrewed systems), and explore more opportunities to partner with (and buy data from) the private sector. This can be seen in significant increases for the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS—one of our clients!), continued growth of the Autonomous and Uncrewed Technology Operations (AUTO) program (another program we’ve been supporting), and language around data procurement and management. We expect Congress to continue to encourage these activities.
We’re also seeing an increase in attention/funding going to the Great Lakes in both bills. In addition to funding for the Great Lakes Authority in the House bill, Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) successfully submitted an amendment during the markup process asking NOAA to submit a report about the agency’s recent Great Lakes investments.
There’s A LOT more to say on these funding proposals for NOAA — reach out if you have any specific questions.
Toplines and Themes for the Other Federal Ocean Agencies
Both the House and Senate propose funding increases for NSF, which was cut last year. The House’s proposed increase does not fully restore FY23 funding, while the Senate’s does.
The two chambers majorly disagree on funding for EPA. EPA was already cut by almost 10% in last year’s spending bill. The House is proposing an additional almost 20% cut. The Senate’s proposal would provide a modest increase to EPA, but still not enough to make up for last year’s cuts. The Science and Technology branch of EPA gets a bigger boost by the Senate and an even bigger cut by the House when compared to topline agency funding numbers. Despite overall cuts, bipartisan programs like the National Estuary Program (another client!) maintained or modestly increased funding in both bills.
Seafood at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) — support in the Senate, but not the House. Many policy leaders in the seafood industry have been pushing for more seafood opportunities at USDA, and for seafood producers to get the same or similar benefits as other U.S. food producers. The effort to include provisions to this effect have been somewhat successful in the Senate farm bill, but—so far—not in the House. The House and Senate funding bills mirror this: the Senate bill includes funding for a Seafood Industry Liaison, regional food business centers to strengthen seafood markets, and increasing seafood consumption in school lunch programs. The House bill does not include any of these provisions.
Stay tuned for more info when Congress returns to DC in September with a looming government funding deadline.