House Democrats did not include funding for the Trump administration’s proposed merger of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), opting instead to increase OPM’s funding in the draft Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) funding bill released Sunday.
The bill offers $339 million in funding for the agency, an increase of $43.4 million over the current levels of funding for FY19. The bill also allots $9 million for IT modernization at OPM, a major reason behind the reorganization proposal.
“The bill rejects the Administration’s proposed merger of OPM with GSA,” the House Appropriations Committee stated in a summary of the bill.
The opposition from Congress comes as no big surprise. The White House released a legislative proposal on May 17 with the details of the planned reorganization, but it currently does not have a sponsor in Congress. During a hearing of the House Oversight and Reform Committee’s Government Operations Subcommittee, members of Congress expressed their skepticism of the reorganization plan.