Pretty surprising it is out now.  And as Jeff mentions strange.  They added a chunk to cte as well.  That cut is expected
On Mar 11, 2019, at 2:32 PM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:

The Department of Education budget materials are now posted:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

I was under the earlier impression that the program-level numbers might not be available until later, but now that I think about it, knowing that the Department of Education was holding their briefing this afternoon, I guess it makes sense that they’d have programmatic detail out today. Anyway, it’s out, and we have some adult education numbers, and it’s, um… something. I have attached the relevant section, from the FY 2020 Education Budget Summary and Background Information document.

Basically, they propose to cut the core WIOA Title II program by $156.2 million, and add $60 million to national leadership (!) to run part of, or maybe all of — I have no idea — a national pre-apprenticeship program.

It's worth remembering that WIOA caps national leadership spending as a percentage of the state grants appropriation. Often past administrations have paid no attention to this when preparing their budgets, but just saying, this proposal is way, way, way out of whack in terms of the proportion of national leadership vs. state grants that the WIOA authorizers envisioned. And who knows how this new program’s money would then be apportioned to the states.

More importantly, I don’t see how you can reprogram a big chunk of money for pre-apprenticeships to Title II under the current WIOA statute. I just don't think that fits within the purpose of Title II. Maybe some of you have other thoughts. But I’m not sure I’m going to spend a lot of time studying it because there is absolutely zero chance that this will happen. Obviously the adult ed community shouldn’t sit on their hands and say nothing about this, so educating members of Congress on how stupid this is, I mean, on your concerns about these cuts/changes, would be wise. In other words, continued education/advocacy w/Congress will continue to be important — I just wouldn’t stress too much about what the administration is proposing here.

<https___www2_ed_gov_about_overview_budget_budget20_summary_20summary_pdf.png>

Have no idea where the EL Civics money went, either.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 10:06 AM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be releasing the (FY) 2020 President's Budget Request today. More precisely, it will be releasing part of that request, with the second part to be released the week of March 18. It is expected the materials released today will include only the main summary volume and the summary tables.  The more detailed backup material is expected the following week, and according to CEF, “agencies’ program-level budget material will be released over time."

At 2:30 PM EST, the U.S. Department of Education will hold their briefing on the President’s FY 2020 request for education.  The event will be streamed here, if you want to watch:

https://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/911e0d15851a4cb8bfaebef5361967e71d?catalog=82d9933c-1256-4cb2-8783-89599eb97fd8

Last year the briefing was, I’m told by some those who were there, marked by a frustrating lack of insight from the Department of Education people assembled to to take questions. I’ve also been told that the reason for this was because those on stage were not privy to the discussions regarding many or most of the policy choices behind the bomber that were made by the administration. Under the Obama administration (the only period in which I used to attend these things) you could count on people with that level of access being there — I can remember several of us asking some pretty technical questions about WIA/WIOA spending and getting reasonably informed responses back. Don’t know what it will be like this year.

Anyway, I’m more confused than ever as to what we’ll actually see today in terms of adult ed funding today, but I guess we’ll see when we see it. How’s that for analysis?

Education budget materials will be posted on Monday afternoon at:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

The Big Picture

The President’s budget will propose very large cuts to non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding — at least 9% to get down to the statutory NDD cap.  However, Sarah Abernathy of CEF thinks the proposal may cut an additional 5% below that level. This cut may not be applied across the board — some agencies are likely to be cut more deeply to offset increases elsewhere.

More from Sarah:

To  provide some perspective on how deep the cut could be, it would require greater cuts than the President’s FY 2019 request for the Department of Education, which was about 11% below what Congress ultimately provided (it was 11.6% below the FY 2019 enacted level counting the rescission of $600 million of previously appropriated funding for Pell Grants, and was 10.8% below the level not including that rescission). But we have a sense of where additional cuts might be made because the Administration was planning to cut education funding by an additional $3.3 billion until Congress enacted a deal that raised the FY 2018 and FY 2019 NDD caps just before the President’s budget was released.  That original request for FY 2019 is about 16% ($11 billion) below the FY 2019 enacted level, and provides a sense of how much could be cut from the Department of Education if there is a 14% cut.  The extra cuts the Administration had planned to make before the spending caps were raised were:

• $1.6 billion rescission of Pell Grant funding,
• $525 million cut to Impact Aid,
• $400 million cut to TRIO programs,
• $500 million less for a new opportunity grant, and
• an extra $300 million cut for Federal Work Study on top of the cut it did include.

Things to Pay Attention To

Aside from the numbers themselves, in every budget request there are policy choices made. Here are a couple of things to watch for:

(1) Work Requirements. According to the Washington Post, the budget will propose "strict new work requirements for 'able-bodied' Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance.”

(2) “Efficiency” Reforms. The Post also reports that the budget proposal will also include, (again, from the Post) "reforms that they say are necessary to make the government more efficient and less duplicative. It could not be immediately learned what these changes would be.”

(3) OCO. They are going to propose keeping the caps in place but work around them a bit on the defense side by proposing close to $175 billion in defense and emergency money into something called the Overseas Contingency Operations account, aka OCO. OCO, because it's supposed to be for emergencies, isn’t subject to the caps. This is a trick clever maneuver that was used by the Obama administration as well, but is being stretched even further under this administration.

Budget Will Be Largely Ignored by Congress

Presidential budgets are often in large part ignored by Congress. Last year, the adminstration proposed lots of cuts, but eventually backed off and agreed to bipartisan deals to increase spending — the shutdown was really a dispute over the policy of building the southern border wall, not the funding per se. Here is what they’re saying in the press about the leaked details of the President’s proposal (again, from the Post):

“Clearly it’s a nonstarter in the House,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), adding that Democrats have no plans to include the domestic spending cuts. “Obviously we’re going to disregard it.”

“It’s hard to maintain a straight face with that kind of proposal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Cutting 5 percent of all the other programs? It’d be hard. Plus you got the House, too,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I think that’d be a difficult task.”

So, not sounding like it’s going to be much of a hit on the Hill — and not just from Democrats. Not a totally meaningless excercise though — these budget documents do give you insights into the administration's priorities, and thus a preview of where the fights may be down the line.

Here is a link to the Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-budget-to-propose-slashing-domestic-spending-boosting-defense/2019/03/08/1758b6e0-41c2-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

In an article in The Hill, key Democrats in the House also denounced the OCO thing I discussed above:

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) denounced a preview of the move as a “gimmick to prop up defense spending” that would “severely shortchange other investments vital to our national and economic security.”

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/433308-five-things-to-watch-for-in-trumps-2020-budget

Again, feel free to recycle any of this material, just be sure to cite me/NCL/CEF and the sources cited above if you do.

I will be back later with some other related news….

Jeff

Jeff Carter
Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr

Senior Policy Advisor
National Coalition for Literacy
www.national-coalition-literacy.orghttp://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/
jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org
Immediate Past President, Committee for Education Funding

Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
1111 14th St, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
www.psr.orghttp://www.psr.org/ | jcarter@psr.orgmailto:jcarter@psr.org

National Coalition for Literacy Members mailing list
Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.orgmailto:Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
To unsubscribe: http://lists.national-coalition-literacy.org/mailman/listinfo/members_lists.national-coalition-literacy.org

National Coalition for Literacy Members mailing list
Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.orgmailto:Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
To unsubscribe: http://lists.national-coalition-literacy.org/mailman/listinfo/members_lists.national-coalition-literacy.org

Sorry for my cross posting, all.  I should have looked deeper into my email.

Jeff, there IS a pre-apprenticeship definition somewhere in DOLETA.  I’ll look for it and report back, but regardless of what it IS, it ISN’T a reason to cut the state grants!

From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Carter
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2019 2:56 PM
To: Nation Coalition for Literacy members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
Subject: Re: [NCL Members] Federal Budget Update
Importance: High

Just to add: I do realize that apprenticeships are one of the secondary or postsecondary education options listed in the definition of career pathways in WIOA, and that the kind of program they are envisioning might be considered  ‘‘workforce preparation activities’’ under Title II. It’s just that the word apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship isn’t to be found in Title II at all. So feels like it doesn't belong there. I suppose if they weren't cutting the core program this would be a different conversation. Curious what others think.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 2:31 PM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:

The Department of Education budget materials are now posted:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

I was under the earlier impression that the program-level numbers might not be available until later, but now that I think about it, knowing that the Department of Education was holding their briefing this afternoon, I guess it makes sense that they’d have programmatic detail out today. Anyway, it’s out, and we have some adult education numbers, and it’s, um… something. I have attached the relevant section, from the FY 2020 Education Budget Summary and Background Information document.

Basically, they propose to cut the core WIOA Title II program by $156.2 million, and add $60 million to national leadership (!) to run part of, or maybe all of — I have no idea — a national pre-apprenticeship program.

It's worth remembering that WIOA caps national leadership spending as a percentage of the state grants appropriation. Often past administrations have paid no attention to this when preparing their budgets, but just saying, this proposal is way, way, way out of whack in terms of the proportion of national leadership vs. state grants that the WIOA authorizers envisioned. And who knows how this new program’s money would then be apportioned to the states.

More importantly, I don’t see how you can reprogram a big chunk of money for pre-apprenticeships to Title II under the current WIOA statute. I just don't think that fits within the purpose of Title II. Maybe some of you have other thoughts. But I’m not sure I’m going to spend a lot of time studying it because there is absolutely zero chance that this will happen. Obviously the adult ed community shouldn’t sit on their hands and say nothing about this, so educating members of Congress on how stupid this is, I mean, on your concerns about these cuts/changes, would be wise. In other words, continued education/advocacy w/Congress will continue to be important — I just wouldn’t stress too much about what the administration is proposing here.

<https___www2_ed_gov_about_overview_budget_budget20_summary_20summary_pdf.png>

Have no idea where the EL Civics money went, either.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 10:06 AM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be releasing the (FY) 2020 President's Budget Request today. More precisely, it will be releasing part of that request, with the second part to be released the week of March 18. It is expected the materials released today will include only the main summary volume and the summary tables.  The more detailed backup material is expected the following week, and according to CEF, “agencies’ program-level budget material will be released over time."

At 2:30 PM EST, the U.S. Department of Education will hold their briefing on the President’s FY 2020 request for education.  The event will be streamed here, if you want to watch:

https://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/911e0d15851a4cb8bfaebef5361967e71d?catalog=82d9933c-1256-4cb2-8783-89599eb97fd8

Last year the briefing was, I’m told by some those who were there, marked by a frustrating lack of insight from the Department of Education people assembled to to take questions. I’ve also been told that the reason for this was because those on stage were not privy to the discussions regarding many or most of the policy choices behind the bomber that were made by the administration. Under the Obama administration (the only period in which I used to attend these things) you could count on people with that level of access being there — I can remember several of us asking some pretty technical questions about WIA/WIOA spending and getting reasonably informed responses back. Don’t know what it will be like this year.

Anyway, I’m more confused than ever as to what we’ll actually see today in terms of adult ed funding today, but I guess we’ll see when we see it. How’s that for analysis?

Education budget materials will be posted on Monday afternoon at:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

The Big Picture

The President’s budget will propose very large cuts to non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding — at least 9% to get down to the statutory NDD cap.  However, Sarah Abernathy of CEF thinks the proposal may cut an additional 5% below that level. This cut may not be applied across the board — some agencies are likely to be cut more deeply to offset increases elsewhere.

More from Sarah:

To  provide some perspective on how deep the cut could be, it would require greater cuts than the President’s FY 2019 request for the Department of Education, which was about 11% below what Congress ultimately provided (it was 11.6% below the FY 2019 enacted level counting the rescission of $600 million of previously appropriated funding for Pell Grants, and was 10.8% below the level not including that rescission). But we have a sense of where additional cuts might be made because the Administration was planning to cut education funding by an additional $3.3 billion until Congress enacted a deal that raised the FY 2018 and FY 2019 NDD caps just before the President’s budget was released.  That original request for FY 2019 is about 16% ($11 billion) below the FY 2019 enacted level, and provides a sense of how much could be cut from the Department of Education if there is a 14% cut.  The extra cuts the Administration had planned to make before the spending caps were raised were:
• $1.6 billion rescission of Pell Grant funding,
• $525 million cut to Impact Aid,
• $400 million cut to TRIO programs,
• $500 million less for a new opportunity grant, and
• an extra $300 million cut for Federal Work Study on top of the cut it did include.

Things to Pay Attention To

Aside from the numbers themselves, in every budget request there are policy choices made. Here are a couple of things to watch for:

(1) Work Requirements. According to the Washington Post, the budget will propose "strict new work requirements for 'able-bodied' Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance.”

(2) “Efficiency” Reforms. The Post also reports that the budget proposal will also include, (again, from the Post) "reforms that they say are necessary to make the government more efficient and less duplicative. It could not be immediately learned what these changes would be.”

(3) OCO. They are going to propose keeping the caps in place but work around them a bit on the defense side by proposing close to $175 billion in defense and emergency money into something called the Overseas Contingency Operations account, aka OCO. OCO, because it's supposed to be for emergencies, isn’t subject to the caps. This is a trick clever maneuver that was used by the Obama administration as well, but is being stretched even further under this administration.

Budget Will Be Largely Ignored by Congress

Presidential budgets are often in large part ignored by Congress. Last year, the adminstration proposed lots of cuts, but eventually backed off and agreed to bipartisan deals to increase spending — the shutdown was really a dispute over the policy of building the southern border wall, not the funding per se. Here is what they’re saying in the press about the leaked details of the President’s proposal (again, from the Post):

“Clearly it’s a nonstarter in the House,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), adding that Democrats have no plans to include the domestic spending cuts. “Obviously we’re going to disregard it.”

“It’s hard to maintain a straight face with that kind of proposal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Cutting 5 percent of all the other programs? It’d be hard. Plus you got the House, too,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I think that’d be a difficult task.”

So, not sounding like it’s going to be much of a hit on the Hill — and not just from Democrats. Not a totally meaningless excercise though — these budget documents do give you insights into the administration's priorities, and thus a preview of where the fights may be down the line.

Here is a link to the Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-budget-to-propose-slashing-domestic-spending-boosting-defense/2019/03/08/1758b6e0-41c2-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

In an article in The Hill, key Democrats in the House also denounced the OCO thing I discussed above:

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) denounced a preview of the move as a “gimmick to prop up defense spending” that would “severely shortchange other investments vital to our national and economic security.”

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/433308-five-things-to-watch-for-in-trumps-2020-budget

Again, feel free to recycle any of this material, just be sure to cite me/NCL/CEF and the sources cited above if you do.

I will be back later with some other related news….

Jeff

Jeff Carter
Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr

Senior Policy Advisor
National Coalition for Literacy
www.national-coalition-literacy.orghttp://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/
jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org
Immediate Past President, Committee for Education Funding

Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
1111 14th St, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
www.psr.orghttp://www.psr.org/ | jcarter@psr.orgmailto:jcarter@psr.org

National Coalition for Literacy Members mailing list
Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.orgmailto:Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
To unsubscribe: http://lists.national-coalition-literacy.org/mailman/listinfo/members_lists.national-coalition-literacy.org

National Coalition for Literacy Members mailing list
Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.orgmailto:Members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
To unsubscribe: http://lists.national-coalition-literacy.org/mailman/listinfo/members_lists.national-coalition-literacy.org

Explains why this is on the agenda for the state directors’ meeting:

PRE-APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMS: A NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR ADULT EDUCATION
Apprenticeship programs provide an opportunity to “earn and learn” in addition to putting program participants on a solid career pathway. Apprenticeship programs have a long history of success in the skilled trades and more recently have expanded to sectors like advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and information technology. Across the nation there is growing interest in expanding apprenticeship programs as a means for assisting adults in securing a path to self-sustaining wages. Pre-apprenticeship programs prepare participants for success in apprenticeship programs. This mini institute will provide attendees with an overview of a framework for quality pre-apprenticeship programs and explore how states can assist local adult education providers in establishing quality pre-apprenticeship programs. Through presentation and interactive exercises, participants will leave with knowledge and technical assistance resources to assist local adult education programs in their state in building successful pre-apprenticeship programs.

From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Carter
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2019 3:27 PM
To: Peter Waite PWaite@proliteracy.org
Cc: Nation Coalition for Literacy members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
Subject: Re: [NCL Members] Federal Budget Update

The only other place I can see that mentions this new funding is in the overview book. The only tiny bit of additional info here is that they cal these "Fast-Track Pre-Apprenticeships."
$60 million increase for Adult Education National Activities for Fast-Track Pre-Apprenticeships for Low-Skilled Adults. This proposal supports State efforts to create pre-apprenticeship programs that increase the number of adults able to meet the basic entrance requirements of apprenticeship programs.
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/budget-highlights.pdf

On Mar 11, 2019, at 2:57 PM, Peter Waite <PWaite@proliteracy.orgmailto:PWaite@proliteracy.org> wrote:

Pretty surprising it is out now.  And as Jeff mentions strange.  They added a chunk to cte as well.  That cut is expected
On Mar 11, 2019, at 2:32 PM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:
The Department of Education budget materials are now posted:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

I was under the earlier impression that the program-level numbers might not be available until later, but now that I think about it, knowing that the Department of Education was holding their briefing this afternoon, I guess it makes sense that they’d have programmatic detail out today. Anyway, it’s out, and we have some adult education numbers, and it’s, um… something. I have attached the relevant section, from the FY 2020 Education Budget Summary and Background Information document.

Basically, they propose to cut the core WIOA Title II program by $156.2 million, and add $60 million to national leadership (!) to run part of, or maybe all of — I have no idea — a national pre-apprenticeship program.

It's worth remembering that WIOA caps national leadership spending as a percentage of the state grants appropriation. Often past administrations have paid no attention to this when preparing their budgets, but just saying, this proposal is way, way, way out of whack in terms of the proportion of national leadership vs. state grants that the WIOA authorizers envisioned. And who knows how this new program’s money would then be apportioned to the states.

More importantly, I don’t see how you can reprogram a big chunk of money for pre-apprenticeships to Title II under the current WIOA statute. I just don't think that fits within the purpose of Title II. Maybe some of you have other thoughts. But I’m not sure I’m going to spend a lot of time studying it because there is absolutely zero chance that this will happen. Obviously the adult ed community shouldn’t sit on their hands and say nothing about this, so educating members of Congress on how stupid this is, I mean, on your concerns about these cuts/changes, would be wise. In other words, continued education/advocacy w/Congress will continue to be important — I just wouldn’t stress too much about what the administration is proposing here.

<https___www2_ed_gov_about_overview_budget_budget20_summary_20summary_pdf.png>

Have no idea where the EL Civics money went, either.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 10:06 AM, Jeff Carter <jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> wrote:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be releasing the (FY) 2020 President's Budget Request today. More precisely, it will be releasing part of that request, with the second part to be released the week of March 18. It is expected the materials released today will include only the main summary volume and the summary tables.  The more detailed backup material is expected the following week, and according to CEF, “agencies’ program-level budget material will be released over time."

At 2:30 PM EST, the U.S. Department of Education will hold their briefing on the President’s FY 2020 request for education.  The event will be streamed here, if you want to watch:

https://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/911e0d15851a4cb8bfaebef5361967e71d?catalog=82d9933c-1256-4cb2-8783-89599eb97fd8

Last year the briefing was, I’m told by some those who were there, marked by a frustrating lack of insight from the Department of Education people assembled to to take questions. I’ve also been told that the reason for this was because those on stage were not privy to the discussions regarding many or most of the policy choices behind the bomber that were made by the administration. Under the Obama administration (the only period in which I used to attend these things) you could count on people with that level of access being there — I can remember several of us asking some pretty technical questions about WIA/WIOA spending and getting reasonably informed responses back. Don’t know what it will be like this year.

Anyway, I’m more confused than ever as to what we’ll actually see today in terms of adult ed funding today, but I guess we’ll see when we see it. How’s that for analysis?

Education budget materials will be posted on Monday afternoon at:
https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

The Big Picture

The President’s budget will propose very large cuts to non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding — at least 9% to get down to the statutory NDD cap.  However, Sarah Abernathy of CEF thinks the proposal may cut an additional 5% below that level. This cut may not be applied across the board — some agencies are likely to be cut more deeply to offset increases elsewhere.

More from Sarah:

To  provide some perspective on how deep the cut could be, it would require greater cuts than the President’s FY 2019 request for the Department of Education, which was about 11% below what Congress ultimately provided (it was 11.6% below the FY 2019 enacted level counting the rescission of $600 million of previously appropriated funding for Pell Grants, and was 10.8% below the level not including that rescission). But we have a sense of where additional cuts might be made because the Administration was planning to cut education funding by an additional $3.3 billion until Congress enacted a deal that raised the FY 2018 and FY 2019 NDD caps just before the President’s budget was released.  That original request for FY 2019 is about 16% ($11 billion) below the FY 2019 enacted level, and provides a sense of how much could be cut from the Department of Education if there is a 14% cut.  The extra cuts the Administration had planned to make before the spending caps were raised were:
• $1.6 billion rescission of Pell Grant funding,
• $525 million cut to Impact Aid,
• $400 million cut to TRIO programs,
• $500 million less for a new opportunity grant, and
• an extra $300 million cut for Federal Work Study on top of the cut it did include.

Things to Pay Attention To

Aside from the numbers themselves, in every budget request there are policy choices made. Here are a couple of things to watch for:

(1) Work Requirements. According to the Washington Post, the budget will propose "strict new work requirements for 'able-bodied' Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance.”

(2) “Efficiency” Reforms. The Post also reports that the budget proposal will also include, (again, from the Post) "reforms that they say are necessary to make the government more efficient and less duplicative. It could not be immediately learned what these changes would be.”

(3) OCO. They are going to propose keeping the caps in place but work around them a bit on the defense side by proposing close to $175 billion in defense and emergency money into something called the Overseas Contingency Operations account, aka OCO. OCO, because it's supposed to be for emergencies, isn’t subject to the caps. This is a trick clever maneuver that was used by the Obama administration as well, but is being stretched even further under this administration.

Budget Will Be Largely Ignored by Congress

Presidential budgets are often in large part ignored by Congress. Last year, the adminstration proposed lots of cuts, but eventually backed off and agreed to bipartisan deals to increase spending — the shutdown was really a dispute over the policy of building the southern border wall, not the funding per se. Here is what they’re saying in the press about the leaked details of the President’s proposal (again, from the Post):

“Clearly it’s a nonstarter in the House,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), adding that Democrats have no plans to include the domestic spending cuts. “Obviously we’re going to disregard it.”

“It’s hard to maintain a straight face with that kind of proposal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Cutting 5 percent of all the other programs? It’d be hard. Plus you got the House, too,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I think that’d be a difficult task.”

So, not sounding like it’s going to be much of a hit on the Hill — and not just from Democrats. Not a totally meaningless excercise though — these budget documents do give you insights into the administration's priorities, and thus a preview of where the fights may be down the line.

Here is a link to the Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-budget-to-propose-slashing-domestic-spending-boosting-defense/2019/03/08/1758b6e0-41c2-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

In an article in The Hill, key Democrats in the House also denounced the OCO thing I discussed above:

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) denounced a preview of the move as a “gimmick to prop up defense spending” that would “severely shortchange other investments vital to our national and economic security.”

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/433308-five-things-to-watch-for-in-trumps-2020-budget

Again, feel free to recycle any of this material, just be sure to cite me/NCL/CEF and the sources cited above if you do.

I will be back later with some other related news….

Jeff

Jeff Carter
Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr

Senior Policy Advisor
National Coalition for Literacy
www.national-coalition-literacy.orghttp://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/
jcarter@literacypolicy.orgmailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org
Immediate Past President, Committee for Education Funding

Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
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Jeff, Judy, and all, thanks for providing the info and initial thoughts on what it means.

Interesting that they dropped the language you (Jeff) mention in your final paragraph, since the "statutorily required program evaluation and performance data" projects are now actually under way. Are they now not planning to use the outcomes of those projects to inform "future decisions regarding the program"?

Although the proposed budget will be a nonstarter in Congress, I think we still need clear talking points that articulate what's wrong with these changes to WIOA funding (yes, Jeff, I hear you saying, "everything").

• What would be the specific effects of the proposed $156 million (25%) reduction to Title II? For example, how would a 25% reduction affect adult ed programs in Senator Shelby's home state of Alabama? What specific services would have to be cut, and whom do they serve?

• What, specifically, are the issues with focusing funding on "pre-apprenticeship" and "fast track"? Regina, you've pointed out a major one, but there are others, such as the fact that pre-apprenticeship is not an appropriate path for many adult learners.

I'll be at the TESOL conference in Atlanta this week and will chat with advocacy folks there about these and other key matters. I'll also be in touch with our friends on the Hill.

Deborah

Deborah Kennedy

Senior Consultant / Owner, Key Words

President, National Coalition for Literacy

office: 202-364-1964 (September-May)

office: 603-293-2402 (June-August)

http://www.key-words.us

http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org

---- On Mon, 11 Mar 2019 16:40:14 -0400 Jeff Carter mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org wrote ----

It will be interesting to see that. I don’t really understand how any of this would work. Gutting the state grant program by $156 million and launching a $60 million adult pre-apprenticeship program at OCTAE really re-orients the Title II program in a pretty substantial way, don’t you think? And again, curious as to how they would implement it. $60 million not actually a lot of money if you carve it up among every state. Will all states be included? And I agree with Regina that “fast track” raises questions about who would really be eligible. I just cannot imagine this proposal having any legs at all. The Obama administration occasionally attempted to put more funding into national leadership, but never this much. And it was always rejected by appropriators. I think folks on the Hill really didn’t like the idea of the money going into a line item controlled by the Department while money for state grants remained stagnant.

BTW, the $485.8 million for Adult Education State Grants they are proposing in FY 2020 is the same amount they proposed for FY 2019. But because of the increases we received in FY 18 & 19, that amount represents a much bigger cut. The big difference this year is that they added the $60 million to national leadership. So in fact they can correctly claim they were more generous this year than last year...

They also dropped some language they included last year, and I think the year before: "States and providers across the country are still working to implement changes in adult education requirements made as a result of the enactment of WIOA in July 2014; future decisions regarding the program will be informed by the statutorily required program evaluation and performance data based on the full implementation of WIOA. "

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 3:28 PM, Judy Mortrude mailto:jmortrude@clasp.org wrote:

Sorry for my cross posting, all.  I should have looked deeper into my email.

Jeff, there IS a pre-apprenticeship definition somewhere in DOLETA.  I’ll look for it and report back, but regardless of what it IS, it ISN’T a reason to cut the state grants!

From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org] On Behalf Of Jeff Carter
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2019 2:56 PM
To: Nation Coalition for Literacy mailto:members@lists.national-coalition-literacy.org
Subject: Re: [NCL Members] Federal Budget Update
Importance: High

Just to add: I do realize that apprenticeships are one of the secondary or postsecondary education options listed in the definition of career pathways in WIOA, and that the kind of program they are envisioning might be considered  ‘‘workforce preparation activities’’ under Title II. It’s just that the word apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship isn’t to be found in Title II at all. So feels like it doesn't belong there. I suppose if they weren't cutting the core program this would be a different conversation. Curious what others think.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 2:31 PM, Jeff Carter mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org wrote:

The Department of Education budget materials are now posted:

https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

I was under the earlier impression that the program-level numbers might not be available until later, but now that I think about it, knowing that the Department of Education was holding their briefing this afternoon, I guess it makes sense that they’d have programmatic detail out today. Anyway, it’s out, and we have some adult education numbers, and it’s, um… something. I have attached the relevant section, from the FY 2020 Education Budget Summary and Background Information document.

Basically, they propose to cut the core WIOA Title II program by $156.2 million, and add $60 million to national leadership (!) to run part of, or maybe all of — I have no idea — a national pre-apprenticeship program.

It's worth remembering that WIOA caps national leadership spending as a percentage of the state grants appropriation. Often past administrations have paid no attention to this when preparing their budgets, but just saying, this proposal is way, way, way out of whack in terms of the proportion of national leadership vs. state grants that the WIOA authorizers envisioned. And who knows how this new program’s money would then be apportioned to the states.

More importantly, I don’t see how you can reprogram a big chunk of money for pre-apprenticeships to Title II under the current WIOA statute. I just don't think that fits within the purpose of Title II. Maybe some of you have other thoughts. But I’m not sure I’m going to spend a lot of time studying it because there is absolutely zero chance that this will happen. Obviously the adult ed community shouldn’t sit on their hands and say nothing about this, so educating members of Congress on how stupid this is
, I mean, on your concerns about these cuts/changes, would be wise. In other words, continued education/advocacy w/Congress will continue to be important — I just wouldn’t stress too much about what the administration is proposing here.

<https___www2_ed_gov_about_overview_budget_budget20_summary_20summary_pdf.png>

 Have no idea where the EL Civics money went, either.

Jeff

On Mar 11, 2019, at 10:06 AM, Jeff Carter mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org wrote:

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be releasing the (FY) 2020 President's Budget Request today. More precisely, it will be releasing part of that request, with the second part to be released the week of March 18. It is expected the materials released today will include only the main summary volume and the summary tables.  The more detailed backup material is expected the following week, and according to CEF, “agencies’ program-level budget material will be released over time."

At 2:30 PM EST, the U.S. Department of Education will hold their briefing on the President’s FY 2020 request for education.  The event will be streamed here, if you want to watch: 

https://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/911e0d15851a4cb8bfaebef5361967e71d?catalog=82d9933c-1256-4cb2-8783-89599eb97fd8

Last year the briefing was, I’m told by some those who were there, marked by a frustrating lack of insight from the Department of Education people assembled to to take questions. I’ve also been told that the reason for this was because those on stage were not privy to the discussions regarding many or most of the policy choices behind the bomber that were made by the administration. Under the Obama administration (the only period in which I used to attend these things) you could count on people with that level of access being there — I can remember several of us asking some pretty technical questions about WIA/WIOA spending and getting reasonably informed responses back. Don’t know what it will be like this year.

Anyway, I’m more confused than ever as to what we’ll actually see today in terms of adult ed funding today, but I guess we’ll see when we see it. How’s that for analysis?

Education budget materials will be posted on Monday afternoon at:

https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/budget20/index.html

The Big Picture

The President’s budget will propose very large cuts to non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding — at least 9% to get down to the statutory NDD cap.  However, Sarah Abernathy of CEF thinks the proposal may cut an additional 5% below that level. This cut may not be applied across the board — some agencies are likely to be cut more deeply to offset increases elsewhere.  

More from Sarah:

To  provide some perspective on how deep the cut could be, it would require greater cuts than the President’s FY 2019 request for the Department of Education, which was about 11% below what Congress ultimately provided (it was 11.6% below the FY 2019 enacted level counting the rescission of $600 million of previously appropriated funding for Pell Grants, and was 10.8% below the level not including that rescission). But we have a sense of where additional cuts might be made because the Administration was planning to cut education funding by an additional $3.3 billion until Congress enacted a deal that raised the FY 2018 and FY 2019 NDD caps just before the President’s budget was released.  That original request for FY 2019 is about 16% ($11 billion) below the FY 2019 enacted level, and provides a sense of how much could be cut from the Department of Education if there is a 14% cut.  The extra cuts the Administration had planned to make before the spending caps were raised were: 

            • $1.6 billion rescission of Pell Grant funding,

            • $525 million cut to Impact Aid,

            • $400 million cut to TRIO programs,

            • $500 million less for a new opportunity grant, and

            • an extra $300 million cut for Federal Work Study on top of the cut it did include.

Things to Pay Attention To

Aside from the numbers themselves, in every budget request there are policy choices made. Here are a couple of things to watch for:

(1) Work Requirements. According to the Washington Post, the budget will propose "strict new work requirements for 'able-bodied' Americans across a range of welfare programs, including health care, housing and nutrition assistance.”

(2) “Efficiency” Reforms. The Post also reports that the budget proposal will also include, (again, from the Post) "reforms that they say are necessary to make the government more efficient and less duplicative. It could not be immediately learned what these changes would be.”

(3) OCO. They are going to propose keeping the caps in place but work around them a bit on the defense side by proposing close to $175 billion in defense and emergency money into something called the Overseas Contingency Operations account, aka OCO. OCO, because it's supposed to be for emergencies, isn’t subject to the caps. This is a trick
 clever maneuver that was used by the Obama administration as well, but is being stretched even further under this administration.

Budget Will Be Largely Ignored by Congress

Presidential budgets are often in large part ignored by Congress. Last year, the adminstration proposed lots of cuts, but eventually backed off and agreed to bipartisan deals to increase spending — the shutdown was really a dispute over the policyof building the southern border wall, not the funding per se. Here is what they’re saying in the press about the leaked details of the President’s proposal (again, from the Post):

“Clearly it’s a nonstarter in the House,” said Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), adding that Democrats have no plans to include the domestic spending cuts. “Obviously we’re going to disregard it.”

“It’s hard to maintain a straight face with that kind of proposal,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Cutting 5 percent of all the other programs? It’d be hard. Plus you got the House, too,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). “I think that’d be a difficult task.”

So, not sounding like it’s going to be much of a hit on the Hill — and not just from Democrats. Not a totally meaningless excercise though — these budget documents do give you insights into the administration's priorities, and thus a preview of where the fights may be down the line.  

Here is a link to the Post article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-budget-to-propose-slashing-domestic-spending-boosting-defense/2019/03/08/1758b6e0-41c2-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

In an article in The Hill, key Democrats in the House also denounced the OCO thing I discussed above:

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) denounced a preview of the move as a “gimmick to prop up defense spending” that would “severely shortchange other investments vital to our national and economic security.”

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/433308-five-things-to-watch-for-in-trumps-2020-budget

Again, feel free to recycle any of this material, just be sure to cite me/NCL/CEF and the sources cited above if you do.

I will be back later with some other related news….

Jeff

Jeff Carter
Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @jeffcrtr

Senior Policy Advisor
National Coalition for Literacy
http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/
mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org
Immediate Past President, Committee for Education Funding

Executive Director
Physicians for Social Responsibility
1111 14th St, NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
http://www.psr.org/ | mailto:jcarter@psr.org

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