Colleagues, As you may know, the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 budget was supposed to be submitted to Congress on February 4. However, it’s pretty widely agreed at this point that this is likely to be delayed due to the ongoing government shutdown. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and in the rest of the Executive Office (EOP) of the President is shut down, thus OMB’s work on the FY 2020 budget has essentially stopped since the shutdown began December. Also, speaking of the shutdown, I hope I have not appeared insensitive or flippant in my comments over the last month when I noted that adult ed is unaffected since the Labor-ED-HHS bills was approved and Dept. of Education remains open. I do realize that there are other government programs outside of the Department of Education that are shutdown and/or running out of money, and that this may cause serious difficulties for students and others in our field in the weeks ahead if the shutdown continues — SNAP comes to mind, as do housing programs at HUD. Just off the top of my head — I know there are others. We are not "home free" if people we serve and work with are suffering as a result of all this. Jeff Jeff Carter Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr Senior Policy Advisor National Coalition for Literacy www.national-coalition-literacy.org <http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/> jcarter@literacypolicy.org <mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> Past President, Committee for Education Funding Executive Director Physicians for Social Responsibility 1111 14th St, NW, Suite 700 Washington, DC 20005 www.psr.org <http://www.psr.org/> | jcarter@psr.org <mailto:jcarter@psr.org>