News

Washington, D.C. –  The Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday approved the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Fiscal Year 19 Appropriations bill, which includes key funding and language provisions advanced by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) that are critical to spurring job creation, improving cancer research efforts, and increasing transparency of Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes.
 
“As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I’m pleased to see that many provisions I championed on behalf of Florida were advanced in this bill,” Rubio said. “Significant funding for apprenticeship grants, funding to better care for children born addicted to opioids, and funding for charter schools are just a few examples of the many provisions that will benefit Floridians all across the state. From a national security perspective, it is also critical that provisions increasing oversight of Chinese government-run Confucius Institutes and their influence operations were included.”
 
Select Rubio provisions included in the FY19 Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill:
 
Labor:

• $160 million for Apprenticeship Grants
• $93 million for Reintegration of Ex-Offenders program
• Report Language encouraging the Department to ensure there are sufficient practices in place to deter fraud and abuse in federally funded workforce development boards, in light of recent allegations about CareerSource Florida’s reporting practices
• Report Language encouraging the Bureau of Labor Statistics to develop a strategy to better understand how automation, digitization, and artificial intelligence are changing the employment landscape
• $50 million for the Homeless Veteran’s Reintegration program
• Report language directing the Secretary to conduct a pilot to improve program outcomes and target underserved populations
• $86.1 million for the Bureau of International Labor Affairs
• Report language directing the Department to submit a report to Congress on the obligation of funds expended to combat human trafficking, child labor, workers’ rights, and forced labor for FY18 and FY19

 
Health and Human Services

• Require National Institute of Health (NIH) to publicly disclose the names of universities NIH funding that also have Confucius Institutes, as well as how much money these schools are receiving.
• Continued to prohibit tax dollars from being used to bailout Obamacare.
• Increased funding for the National Institutes of Health

o   Increased focus on Alzheimer’s Disease research
o   Non-opioids for pain relief
o   BRAIN initiative to unlock cures to neurological diseases like Parkinson’s
o   Cancer research

• Pediatric disease research – Provides funding for NIH to expand its molecular match program so physicians know if certain adult cancer drugs will be effective for children and funding to enable the NIH to fully implement the Childhood Cancer STAR Act to help childhood cancer survivors. Ensures NIH funding goes toward pediatric clinical trials that cannot be conducted outside of the NIH so more children have access to potentially life-saving drugs.
• Increased funding for health care fraud detection, which is plaguing Florida.
• Report language that ensures the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is able to continue to track the health outcomes of children born with the Zika virus.
• Funding for efforts to improve best-practices for doctors caring for children born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, which Rubio introduced legislation on earlier this year.
• Report language to improve the lives of children living with Muscular Dystrophy
• Language directing CMS to provide guidance on how states can better utilize telehealth in Medicaid and CHIP.
• Ensures that HHS has the resources necessary to respond to an emergency such as a hurricane or a terrorist attack, including hospital preparedness, medical corps response teams, the strategic national stockpile of necessary medical supplies, and vaccines to potential chemical attacks, like anthrax.
• Ryan White HIV/AIDS program – Continues to provide funding for Ryan White Programs, which is becoming more important to Florida, since Miami and Fort Lauderdale had the highest rate of HIV diagnoses per capita last year.
• Maintains robust funding for community health centers
• Ensures Free Clinics have necessary funding to prevent medical malpractice
• Retains funding for the Living Holocaust Survivor’s Assistance Program
• Opioids:
  • Funded efforts to improve best-practices for doctors caring for children born addicted to opioids, or neonatal abstinence syndrome. Earlier this year, Sen. Rubio and Sen. Nelson introduced legislation on this issue.
  • Increases funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which includes mental health and opioid funding.

o   Funding for the SAMHSA Substance Abuse Treatment Block Grant.
o   SAMHSA targeted capacity grants directly for states to respond to the opioid crisis.
o   Directed funding to better detect and prevent opioid-related infections, such as HIV and Hepatitis B & C.
o   Funding for rural communities and community health centers’ opioid efforts.
o   Funding for behavioral health clinics.
o   Requested funding for the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training to increase the number of mental health and substance abuse treatment professionals available.
o   Increased flexibility in mental health and substance abuse treatment funding so more people can access the services.
 
Department of Education

• American Dream Accounts– Requests that the GAO publish a report on the expansion of College Savings Accounts.
• Career and Technical Education (CTE) State Grants – $1.2 billion and report language to create a high quality research into CTE programs and have the department work with industry stakeholders and states to create a report on what makes a high quality CTE program and provide recommendations to Congress on how we can improve our programs in the future. 
• Confucius Institutes – Report language on foreign gift disclosures and the influence the influence they have on higher education institutions.
• Student Right to Know Before You Go – Report language to have the Department of Education evaluate the use of “secure multi-party computation” for developing post-secondary student earning and outcome datasets.
• Charter Schools – Increased funding for charter schools by $45 million to a total of $445 million.
• English Language Acquisition – $737 million of English language learners and report language to encourage the states to pursue these funds, including the availability of hurricane relief funds that can assist these schools districts.
• Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities – Increase of $6 million to total of $286 million in funding.
• IDEA Grants to States – Increase of $125 million, to a total of $12.4 billion in funding.
• Impact Aid – Increase of $25 million to a total of $1.4 billion in funding.
• Magnet Schools – Secured level funding for Magnet Program at $105 million. 
• Special Olympics – Received an increase of $2.5 million, $17.5 million total.
• School Safety and mental health – $95 million for school counselors and mental health interventions, including increased funding for Dept. of Ed’s Project SERV, which addresses immediate needs after a traumatic event.