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Federal Budget Battle Unfolds, But the RFPs Just Keep Rollin’ Along

Last Sunday, I wrote about the Obama Administration’s emerging planned Federal FY 2011 Budget Cuts. Not to be upstaged and right on cue, this week the House Appropriation Committee released a press release regarding Republican plan to cut the budget, CR Spending Cuts to Go Deep, which proposes $58 Billion in “non-security discretionary spending reductions” in this fiscal year.

Curiously, some of the grant programs on the Republican chopping block mirror the Obama administration’s proposed cuts (e.g., CDBG and CSBG). Some others, which are probably of most interest to our readers and clients, are LIHEAP (I am not making this acronym up—Google it), SAMHSA (not clear which programs), CDC (no details on which programs), Rural Development Services, WIC, and $2 billion from various job training programs. The Appropriations Committee has targeted 70 grant programs for reduction this fiscal year via the next Continuing Resolution (CR), which is supposed to be adopted by March 4. The Obama Administration’s FY 2011 budget will be released this week. The Republicans will presumably lambast it. Should be an interesting few weeks. As I opined last week, while I think it likely substantial reductions to both this fiscal year and next fiscal year grant programs will result from this brouhaha, the numbers will be somewhere in the middle.

Since our crystal ball is in the shop and we can’t know the future, Seliger + Associates just keeps on keepin’ on writing proposals in response to the flood of new RFPs that continue to be issued. Here are few that have been issued in recent weeks:

The vast majority of federal RFPs are issued in the January to July timeframe. To paraphrase Oscar Hammerstein, the government grant making machinery jes’ keeps rolling along as the budget debate unfolds. If you seek federal grants, don’t give up. As in Paul Robeson sang in the revised 1938 lyrics for Ol Man River, “But I keeps laffin’/ Instead of cryin’ / I must keep fightin’; / Until I’m dyin’, / And Ol’ Man River, / He’ll just keep rollin’ along!”

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