Prepping for our policy committee call at 4, thought I'd pass on the latest approps news, culled form various CEF updates. Fiscal Year 2018 As you know, Congress has enacted a short-term continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government through December 8th — essentially punting final decisions on FY 18 funding until later in the fall. More info on the FY 18 appropriations bills below, but it’s important to bear in mind that none of these bills represent final decisions on FY 2018. The likely outcomes of all this is an omnibus bill in November (or maybe even December, if they do another short-term CR). Anyway, here’s the state of play in the House and Senate as of this week. House Appropriations Committee bill This House full-year FY 18 appropriations package (H.R. 3354) now covers all 12 spending bills after the House folded in the four-bill "minibus" (H.R. 3219) it passed in July. The House level funds WIAO Title II adult education. Senate Appropriations Committee bill Last Thursday the Senate Appropriations Committee reported out its FY 2018 funding bill. I’ve attached a table that Sarah Abernathy of CEF put together showing programmatic funding based on what they’ve heard. I don’t believe that we’ve seen a Committee report or official table yet so it’s possible some of these numbers may change. Adult education under Title II of WIOA is level-funded, as expected. Which means, assuming the Senate number is confirmed, that both the House and Senate have level funded adult education in their bills. This is probably as good a scenario we could have hoped for going into the omnibus negotiations. More from Sarah: “The Senate Committee bill is far better for education programs than the House Committee bill or the President’s budget. Not counting rescissions of Pell grant funding, the bill provides $68.3 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Education, a $29 million increase over the comparable 2017 level. However, after accounting for rescissions of previously appropriated Pell grant funding in both FY 17 ($1.31 billion rescinded) and in this FY 18 bill ($2.6 billion rescinded), the net change in resources represents a cut of $1.3 billion below the FY 17 level.” NCL members follow more than just Title II of WIOA so I’m curious about the fate of any other programs that are important to you in either the House or Senate bills. The Senate Committee bill maintains funding for Title II, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Title IV-A, Comprehensive Literacy Development Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and many smaller programs that the President’s budget eliminated. While the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved eight bills, none of those bills has been brought to the floor, and the committee is likely to hold off on marking up the Interior-Environment, Homeland Security, Financial Services, and Defense bills until at least next week. The Budget Caps The big overarching problem for finalizing FY 18 appropriations is the Budget Control Act's (BCA) caps on federal discretionary spending. Without an increase in the caps, it’s going to be tough to increase any federal education funding, let alone adult education funding, and it increases the danger that education funding could be cut to provide funding for defense. Everyone in Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — are pressing for increasing funds for the military. The $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for example, being seated this week, calls for big increases that would require lifting the BCA's cap on defense programs in FY 18. Democrats are expected to press during debate for an increase in the BCA’s non-defense cap to keep "parity" between defense and non defense. You’ll recall that parity was a really strong principle backed by the Obama administration, but it is not a priority for the Trump administration, which has also been pressing for increasing military spending. (Note that even though the NDAA goes way over the BCA caps it can still advance for now because it’s an authorization measure and doesn't actually appropriate money.) But because they’ll need Democratic votes to pass an omnibus later this fall, the conventional thinking is Republicans will probably have to agree to raise the caps on both defense and non-defense to get the military increases they want. Jeff Jeff Carter @jeffcrtr Past President & Policy Advisor National Coalition for Literacy www.national-coalition-literacy.org <http://www.national-coalition-literacy.org/> jcarter@literacypolicy.org <mailto:jcarter@literacypolicy.org> Vice-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>