blog navigation

Federal Relations News
A list that showcases University resources and interactions with federal agencies

blog posts

  • Center for Global Studies Brings Educators to DC

    On July 1st and 2nd, the Center for Global Studies brought the international secondary educators to Washington D.C.

  • Center for Wounded Veterans Groundbreaking

    Earlier today at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a number of campus and government leaders broke ground for the Chez Family Foundation Center for Wounded Veterans in Higher Education...

  • DC Visitors: UIUC College of ACES Assistant Professors

    Nine assistant professors from UIUC's College of ACES visited DC the week of July 29 to learn about federal funding opportunities for research.

  • DC Visitors: Week of July 15

    This week in Washington, we had our Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) leadership team on Capitol Hill to raise the profile of TCIPG's revolutionary work to make the power grid more secure.

  • DC Visitors: Week of July 29

    College of Medicine Dean Dimitri Azar and Dr. Gene Robinson, Professor in Entomology and Neuroscience were in DC this week.

  • DC Visitors: Week of July 8

    Professor Bill King and OVPR's Caralynn Nowinski were in D.C. for the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation (DMDI) Institute Proposers' Day.

  • DC Visitors: Week of June 24

    UIC Physics Professor Nikos Varelas, Urbana Professor Stephen Long, President Robert Easter, VPR Larry Schook, and Professor Bill King came to DC.

  • Dr. Gallagher Promotes Center for Wounded Veterans

    Dean Gallagher visited DC to promote the planned center for veterans.

  • Farm Bill Update - 10.7.2013

    Although the 9-month extension of the 2008 farm bill expired on the 1st, Congress is close to negotiating the final reauthorization language...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter 03.23.2018

    Congressional leaders released a $1.3 trillion FY2018 omnibus spending bill on March 21. Research and education fared...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter 04.06.2018

    The Office of Governmental Relations (OGR) has uploaded all of the University of Illinois System's Fiscal Year 2019 appropriations requests to the federal webpage...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter 04.13.2018

    Congress returned to DC this week after a two-week recess. Although national attention was focused primarily on Facebook...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 05.11.2018

    The Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 appropriations process is in full swing and several funding bills were approved this week by their respective subcommittees. Specifically...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 06.08.2018

    Both chambers of Congress have been making progress on their respective appropriations bills for Fiscal Year 2019. Just this week...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 07.27.2018

    The House broke for its month-long August recess yesterday. As previously reported, the Senate has cancelled the majority of its recess to complete work on confirmations and appropriations. Below is a quick update on Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 appropriations and some highlights of the U of I System's recent engagement activities in the nation's capital...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 09.14.2018

    Congress sent a final Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 spending bill to the President this week which funds the departments of Energy and Veterans Affairs, the Army Corps of Engineers and the operations of Congress. The three-bill minibus ensures that at least some agencies will receive full FY2019 funding before the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1.

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 09.28.2018

    Congress successfully beat the clock this week in wrapping up two more fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills and avoiding a partial government shutdown. Early Friday, President Trump signed into law legislation providing full-year funding for...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.11.2013

    Earlier in the week, House Republicans continued its pattern of passing discrete and politically popular funding bills designed to take the “sting” out of the shutdown...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.15.2018

    Congress has now approved, and the president has signed into law, five fiscal year (FY) 2019 appropriations bills, including funding for the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Education, as well as the National Institutes of Health. When Congress returns in mid-November for a lame-duck session, it will consider the remaining seven bills, which would replace funding now set to expire on December 7. While the FY2019 appropriations process has gone smoothly so far, a fight over border wall funding could derail the process.

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.16.2015

    With so much still up in the air for House Republican leadership races, negotiations surrounding the federal budget situation seem to be on the backburner...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.18.2013

    After being closed for 16 days, the federal government has finally reopened, allowing hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal employees to return to work...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.2.2015

    Earlier this week, Congress acted just in time to prevent a government shutdown. The University of Illinois had significant representation on Capitol Hill from two of its campuses: UIC Chancellor Amiridis visited the Illinois Congressional delegation and one of Urbana's deans testified before a House subcommittee...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.24.2014

    Only ten days remain until the election, and the Senate majority hangs in the balance. A strong anti-incumbent mood permeates the country...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.25.2013

    With the Senate in recess and the House only in session on Tuesday and Wednesday, it was a shorter and quieter week on Capitol Hill...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.28.2016

    With 10 days left before the election, significant changes are right around the corner. Our next edition will have a recap of the election results...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.30.2015

    This was a momentous week on Capitol Hill. The House of Representatives elected Wisconsin Congressman and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan to serve as its new speaker and Congress passed a two-year budget agreement...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.31.2014

    The election is days away, and DC is a ghost town. Elected officials are either back in their home districts fighting for survival or criss-crossing the country to help others...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.6.2017

    The University of Illinois System co-hosted a breakfast meeting with Sen. Dick Durbin this week with the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Francis Collins, and the Illinois Congressional delegation...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 10.7.2016

    Following a compressed September session, Congress is back in recess again until after the November 8 election. Before leaving Washington, Congress approved a Continuing Resolution to avert a shutdown and fund government operations through early December...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.10.2014

    Both the House and the Senate returned to DC this week with a critical deadline looming—the expiration of the current continuing resolution on January 15...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.1.2013

    Since this was the first week that the House and the Senate were both back in session, two significant conference committee meetings took place...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.15.2013

    Although the week was dominated by the media covering the false-starts of the roll-out of the President's health care portal, important conversations were happening around sealing a potential budget agreement and partially curbing sequestration...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.16.2018

    Beginning in January, there will be three new faces in the Illinois delegation.

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.18.2016

    Members of Congress returned to Washington this week to kick off the post-election lame-duck session. This edition provides some updates and key takeaways surrounding the 115th Congress, while providing a glimpse at the new Illinois Congressional delegation...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.21.2014

    The lame duck session kicked off last week, with more than 60 newly-elected Members in town for New Member Orientation. Representatives-Elect Bob Dold and Mike Bost got a crash course on Hill operations so they can hit the ground running in January...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.22.2013

    This week spurred a sense of optimism around the possibility of a budget agreement that would replace a portion of sequestration cuts...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.3.2017

    Yesterday, House Republicans unveiled their long-anticipated tax reform bill. Below are the most noteworthy provisions that relate to higher education...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.16.2015

    This week was all about raising the University of Illinois' profile in the nation's capital. Urbana's senior leaders and prominent researchers fanned out across Capitol Hill, the federal funding agencies, the White House, recording studios—and partnered with an esteemed scientific association—to demonstrate Illinois thought leadership across a wide range of disciplines...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.17.2014

    Just weeks after a prolonged government shutdown in October, both the House and Senate passed an omnibus appropriations bill that returns Congress to some semblance of budgetary normalcy...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.7.2014

    Tuesday's blowout election was a clear rebuke of President Obama, who has now witnessed the loss of more of his party's House seats than any president since Harry Truman...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 11.8.2013

    The Senate was in session this week, and the House was in recess. But substantial groundwork continues to be laid for the reauthorization of bills important to UI...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.12.2014

    It's been a climactic final week of session, and we have not quite reached the finish line...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.13.2013

    On Tuesday evening, the chairs of the House and Senate Budget Committees, Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Patty Murray, announced that they had reached a two-year budget agreement after weeks of deliberation...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.19.2014

    Washington has gone home for the holidays.

    The House adjourned after President Obama signed the year-end appropriations bill, while the Senate remained in session this week to finish its "must do" items that included tax extenders and judicial nominations...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.20.2013

    On Wednesday, the Senate passed the two-year budget deal by a vote of 64-36...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.22.2017

    As Congress worked to enact tax reform legislation, OGR and the entire U of I System worked to ensure that the voices...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.23.2015

    President Barack Obama commanded the bully pulpit this week with his annual State of the Union (SOTU) address. He then barnstormed across the country promoting initiatives from his speech

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.23.2017

    Another short but busy week lies ahead on Capitol Hill before Republicans head to Philadelphia for their annual joint retreat to strategize on their agenda for this session...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 1.24.2014

    Following last week's passage of an omnibus appropriations bill, both chambers recessed for a week...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 12.5.2014

    Lawmakers returned to Washington either frustrated or energized by President Obama's executive action on immigration. How would that order impact the path forward for the end of the year?