Hi everyone, I was out of the country for the last 10 days or so and I’ve been catching up with stuff last night and today. All the info below basically comes from CEF. They report that the FY 2019 Labor-HHS-Education funding bill is likely to be finalized Friday. The conference committee working out differences between the Senate and House versions of those two bills will have its only official meeting today at 11:30am. Committee staff is saying that they hope to file the agreement on Friday, and then bring it to the House floor the last week of September. The House is not in session next week, but the Senate will be, so it’s possible the Senate would vote on the bill first. It sounds like many of you reached out to members while I was away about preserving the increase in the Senate version of the bill. Whatever is going to be decided about that is going to be decided tomorrow. Once they have a final agreement I don't expect any substantive changes to be considered later if they are serious about getting this thing passed by September 30. The good news is that negotiators have said that the Labor-HHS-Education bill will be funded at the higher Senate level. However, we won’t know the programmatic totals until the agreement is filed and we can see the details. Not sure whether we’ll have that Friday. 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> 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>

Good news: the conferee report, was posted a few hours ago <https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20180910/Joint%20%20Statement.pdf>. The Department of Education funding section begins on page 471 of the PDF, and the table of programmatic funding levels for the Department starts on page 529. Sarah Abernathy from CEF will have a analysis and updated CEF tables out in a bit, but in the meantime my quick perusal of the report indicates that the compromise bill contains all of the education increases that were in the Senate bill, including the $25 million to adult education under WIOA. I’ve attached the relevant table from the report. Also attached is an interesting paragraph from the report that expresses concern over any plans by the department to eliminate or consolidate OCTAE, and reminding the administration that any proposed elimination or consolidation of OCTAE would require approval by Congress. Jeff > On Sep 13, 2018, at 9:20 AM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.org <mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org>> wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > I was out of the country for the last 10 days or so and I’ve been catching up with stuff last night and today. All the info below basically comes from CEF. > > They report that the FY 2019 Labor-HHS-Education funding bill is likely to be finalized Friday. The conference committee working out differences between the Senate and House versions of those two bills will have its only official meeting today at 11:30am. Committee staff is saying that they hope to file the agreement on Friday, and then bring it to the House floor the last week of September. The House is not in session next week, but the Senate will be, so it’s possible the Senate would vote on the bill first. > > It sounds like many of you reached out to members while I was away about preserving the increase in the Senate version of the bill. Whatever is going to be decided about that is going to be decided tomorrow. Once they have a final agreement I don't expect any substantive changes to be considered later if they are serious about getting this thing passed by September 30. > > The good news is that negotiators have said that the Labor-HHS-Education bill will be funded at the higher Senate level. However, we won’t know the programmatic totals until the agreement is filed and we can see the details. Not sure whether we’ll have that Friday. > > 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> > 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> > >