Hot off the wire from NCL’s Washington Desk: The House is voting today on the budget deal, H.R. 3877, which is officially called the "Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019.” Sarah Abernathy of CEF provides a helpful and succinct summary of what this bill means: "The budget deal effectively increases NDD funding for FY 2020 by $27 billion over FY 2019 levels once you count a new cap adjustment of up to $2.5 billion for the decennial census. However, that increase is $7 billion (20%) smaller than the NDD funding increase the House approved earlier this year. If Congress applies the funding in the same proportion that the House used for its FY 2020 bills – and of course, there’s no requirement that the funding be spread proportionately – that would reduce the House’s $11.8 billion increase for the Labor-HHS-Education bill by about $2.3 billion.” In other words, they *could* spread the reductions proportionally, or might not — it could be that *more* of the increases in the Labor-HHS-Education are cut back, necessitating some reductions in the increases the House provided for education programs — like the WIOA adult education program. My *guess* from past history is that it will be easier politically and more expedient to reduce one of the bigger programs and leave the little ones alone. But again, we don’t know how they will handle it. Anyway, I know all of you have plans to meet with your members of Congress back home during the long August recess, and will be thanking/advocating for that increase that was in the House Labor-HHS-Education bill for adult education. :) House and Senate leadership on both sides of the aisle support the bill and are urging support. Sarah notes some progressive Dems are opposed because it increases defense spending more than they want (I should note there are other objections as well) and hardcore fiscal conservatives on the Republican side are opposed because it increases the debt limit and provides more spending on non-defense stuff than they want. I work with a lot of the progressives on the military spending issue and my prediction is most of them are going to ultimately vote for this bill and live to fight for another day. Perhaps Republicans who are hardliners on the budget and the debt ceiling will stick to voting against. But the bill will pass, easily. Once the bill passes the House, the Senate is expected to take it up before they leave for August recess. Then, when they come back in September, they can move forward with the appropriations process for FY 2020. I remain a bit skeptical they’ll get everything done by the due date of September 30. Remember that the Senate has yet to mark up any appropriations bills at all. 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> Immediate 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>