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

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  • 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?

  • 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...

  • White House Honors UIC's Sivananthan

    A UIC professor was honored as a "Champion of Change" at a White House event for immigrant entrepreneurs and innovators.

  • This Week in IL: Transportation Roundtable

    This past Thursday, President Easter and Congressman Mike Quigley hosted a roundtable with a variety of transportation stakeholders to discuss sustainable transportation solutions for the Chicagoland area.

  • 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 - 4.18.2014

    The House and Senate were not in session this week. Both chambers will be in recess again next week...

  • 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 - 2.28.2014

    This past Wednesday, House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp introduced a discussion draft with the intention to have it lay the foundation for future comprehensive tax reform legislation...

  • TSC Releases Sparking Economic Growth 2.0

    A new report entitled “Sparking Economic Growth 2.0” was released today by The Science Coalition (TSC), a national association comprised of public and private research universities...

  • OGR Announces Staff Changes

    I wanted to share with you the news that I am leaving the Office of Governmental Relations (OGR), effective this Friday, February 27. I will return to Capitol Hill next month...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 7.13.2015

    With only three weeks remaining until August recess, Congress is hastening its pace to pass bills that will resonate well with constituents, including a medical innovation bill...

  • UIC Student Delegation Visits Capitol Hill

    Earlier this week, UIC Student Trustee Danielle Leibowitz led a delegation of UIC students to Washington.

  • 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...

  • NCSA Leaders Champion Blue Waters

    Two NCSA staff members visited DC recently to promote the use of Blue Waters, the Cray-based supercomputer in Champaign.

  • House Approves Student Loan Interest Rate Bill

    Yesterday evening, the House passed the final version of the student loan interest rate legislation with overwhelming support, by a vote of 392 to 31.

  • VCR Peter Schiffer Visits NSF

    During his trip to DC, VCR Peter Schiffer had a full slate of meetings at the National Science Foundation...

  • 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...

  • 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 - 2.21.2014

    Both the House and the Senate had district work periods this week, but will be in session next week...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 5.30.2014

    The House and Senate are both in session next week, with the Senate expected to take up student loan interest rate legislation...

  • Dr. Gallagher Promotes Center for Wounded Veterans

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

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 6.12.2015

    Both chambers were in session to deliberate appropriations and a major trade bill. However, Members took a quick break Thursday night to engage in a friendly game of baseball...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 7.18.2014

    Both the House and the Senate will be in session next week. While the government remains funded until Sept. 30—the end of the fiscal year—only two legislative weeks remain before...

  • 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 - 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- 1.30.2015

    The Senate passed legislation to advance the Keystone XL pipeline after three weeks of debate, while House Republicans continued their rocky start by pulling an immigration bill from the Floor. Homeland security and immigration funding expires in one month...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 2.13.2015

    UI President-designate Tim Killeen returned to Washington this week for more engagement with our delegation and big thinkers.

    With Homeland Security funding expiring soon, congressional Republicans appear no closer to finding an endgame with both chambers...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 3.14.2014

    This week, OGR submitted the University of Illinois' Fiscal Year 2015 programmatic requests to the Illinois Congressional delegation...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 4.27.2015

    Last week, Vice President Joe Biden visited the Urbana campus to highlight student leadership surrounding the "It's on Us" campaign. In the nation's capital, the House moved forward on legislation to reauthorize the America COMPETES Act...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 7.17.2015

    The University of Illinois was all over DC this week, as UI President Tim Killeen led 10 deans, associate chancellors, and other rising leaders from Chicago, Urbana, and Springfield to the nation's capital as part of a President's Executive Leadership Program. The program's DC seminar is designed to provide these senior level, campus-based administrators with greater exposure to federal issues and the federal policymaking process. They spent two full days meeting with the heads of national associations, top officials at federal agencies, the Illinois delegation, and local alumni...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 9.26.2014

    This week, another University of Illinois voice joined SCIENCE 2034, the national messaging initiative by The Science Coalition that looks 20 years into the future to predict what might be possible so long as the federal government sustains strong funding for basic scientific research...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 9.27.2013

    The end of the fiscal year is just days away, and there is no agreement in sight that would keep the government funded...

  • 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 - 1.9.2015

    The 114th Congress has officially kicked off! The week was dominated by swearing-in events, but there is already a lot of legislative activity underway, with the House authorizing the Keystone Pipeline and tweaking the Affordable Care Act...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 2.6.2015

    The President released his much anticipated budget this week, while UIC's next Chancellor made his Washington debut.House Republicans voted again to repeal Obamacare, while Senate Republicans struggled to undo President Obama's executive actions on immigration ahead of a key deadline...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 2.7.2014

    Following last week's passage in the House, the farm bill conference report was taken up early this week by the Senate...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 2.14.2014

    Congress lifted the debt ceiling this week with a very close vote in the House but no strings attached, signaling a potential cease fire in the budgetary wars that have gripped Washington the past three years...

  • UIS Students Meet Rep. Schock

    UIS students had the opportunity to meet Rep. Aaron Schock during a February visit to Washington.

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 3.6.2015

    After months of Republican infighting, funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is finally on solid ground. Before adjourning early to beat a snowstorm, the House approved a nine-month DHS appropriations bill without attaching any conditions to block the President's executive actions on immigration. Now that this stalemate is over, Congress can turn to other items, such as budget resolutions, appropriations, and addressing the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR)...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 3.20.2015

    Although all the action was at the committee level, the focus this week in Congress revolved around the Fiscal Year (FY) 2016 budgets introduced by House and Senate Republican...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 3.28.2014

    The House passed a one-year delay to the “sustainable growth rate” (SGR)—the rate at which Medicare reimburses physicians, averting a 24 percent cut to doctors...

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter- 5.1.2015

    There was a lot of contention on Capitol Hill this week, between partisan debates surrounding appropriations bills in the House and Senate consideration of an Iran nuclear agreement oversight bill. On a more bipartisan note, the 21st Century Cures initiative took a big step forward...

  • Senate Looks at Student Loan Interest Rate Bills

    Can Congress reach a bipartisan compromise before the student loan interest rate doubles in July?

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 6.20.2014

    The House and Senate were both in session this week. While appropriations bills dominated the legislative agenda in both chambers, most of the oxygen on the Hill was squeezed out...

  • 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.

  • Federal Relations E-Newsletter - 7.3.2014

    Both chambers were out of session this week, but will return early next week. With last Thursday marking the one-year anniversary since the Senate passed its comprehensive immigration reform bill...

  • 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.

  • UI's IGPA Honors Former Senator Snowe

    Yesterday, the University of Illinois’ Institute of Government and Public Affairs (IGPA) co-hosted the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government ceremony with Senator Dick Durbin.

  • UIUC Wins $1.4 Million UTC Grant

    In a recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the National University Rail (NURail) Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was awarded a $1.4 million Tier 1 University Transportation Center (UTC) grant.

  • 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...