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On December 21, Congress approved legislation, H.R. 133, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, which combined all 12 Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations bills and a $900 billion COVID relief package. The House passed the bill in two votes – 327 – 85 (Divisions B, C, E, and F) and 359-53 (the remainder of the package), and the Senate passed the entire package by a vote of 92-6.

Congress also passed a weeklong continuing resolution to maintain current funding for the government through December 28, which ensures enough time for President Trump to sign H.R. 133 into law.

Overall, and especially despite tight discretionary spending caps constraining the availability of funding for all federal agencies, the bill provides sufficient levels of funding for agencies that directly and indirectly support the population sciences. Several agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Health Statistics, and National Science Foundation, received modest to more robust funding increases as compared to Fiscal Year 2020.

PAA is disappointed, however, that the final bill did not include language to extend the 2020 Census reporting deadlines for delivering apportionment and redistricting data. PAA will continue to work with the census stakeholder community to convince Congress to extend the reporting deadlines as soon as the 117th Congress convenes next month. Congress must offer certainty to the Census Bureau's career experts as they work to finish data processing, tabulate the apportionment counts, and then prepare the redistricting files for the states.