Long one today! As usual, hat tip to CEF for much of this info. —Jeff Comings and Goings Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN), Republican co-chair of the adult literacy caucus, told reporters yesterday he may not run for another term. He said he would decide in the “next week or so.” https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/tennessee-phil-roe-chairman/ <https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/tennessee-phil-roe-chairman/> After last week’s announcement that House Appropriations Committee Chair Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ) will retire at the end of this year, four Republican subcommittee chairs have said they will run for the job: Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), chair of the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee (ninth in the Committee’s seniority) Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), chair of the Agriculture Subcommittee (third in the Committee’s seniority) Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), chair of the Defense Subcommittee (fourth in the Committee’s seniority) Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), chair of the Energy and Water Subcommittee (fifth in the Committee’s seniority) I don’t see anyone in the list that I would call a big adult ed champion — though Cole generally supportive of education. But maybe some of you know more about some of these other folks. Of course, if the House majority switches after the election, the next chair will be a Democrat. FY 2018 Funding/Budget Caps Etc. The current Continuing Resolution (CR) that is keeping the government open until they agree to a final FY 2018 funding bill expires on Thursday. The House is scheduled to be in session this week just through Wednesday. House Republicans are reportedly going to introduce a bill that pairs a full year of defense spending, plus funding for community health centers and a package of expiring Medicare programs that need to be extended, with another short-term CR (rumored to be 6 weeks) for everything else (such a a package is known as a “cromnibus"). Speaker Ryan and other GOP leaders were pitching this idea at a GOP conference meeting last night. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the Republican whip, told The Hill that the House will vote on the package today. Six weeks makes sense (if anything related to this can be said to make sense) because that would take them to March 22, the day before Congress’s two-week spring recess. Giving defense hawks and conservatives a full year of defense spending might enable Ryan to pass a the bill with only Republican votes. Then the question is whether that bill would make it through the Senate, where they need Democratic votes tp prevent a filibuster. At a meeting with Democratic appropriations staff last week (see below), I asked about whether a cromnibus bill like this might be proposed, and they dismissed the possibility that such a scheme would work — they argued that it would not get enough Democratic votes. But I guess the Republicans are still going to try! For what it’s worth, the Administration would like this bill to include an increase in the government’s debt ceiling, but that would cause some conservatives to drop their support for the bill in the House, so they’re not going to do that. In fact, Scalise told The Hill flat out that the House “cromnibus" will not include language to raise the debt ceiling. Assuming they get either this “cromnibus” thing passed or some other CR, that takes care of the immediate problem this week, but they've apparently made little progress on negotiating a final deal to raise the caps — which everyone wants to be a two-year deal — and which they need to do to negotiate a final spending bill for 2018. CEF Hill Meetings Last week CEF staff/officers and I met with both the Republican and Democratic staff of the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee. Staff confirmed that once a cap deal is made, it will take 4-6 weeks to craft a final year-long spending bill. So that means, if they made a deal tomorrow (which is not going to happen), it would be the middle of March at the earliest before we’d know what the FY 2018 funding levels for adult ed are going to be. Since a cap deal is not imminent, it may be much, much later when this is all finalized. I am slightly more encouraged at the moment that there is at least a possibility of getting a bit more money for adult ed in that final 2018 spending bill, if/when they ever get to negotiating a bill. While staff are in agreement that there won’t be NDD/defense parity in the final agreement, Democrats in the Senate aren’t going to sign off on a cap deal there without a decent raise for non-defense discretionary, and I think a decent amount of that still might be available for education programs, even assuming a lot of the increase is divvied up to other committees before they even get to the Labor-HHS-Education allocation. IMO, it's worth an advocacy push, at least with Labor-H appropriators, sometime in the next several weeks. CEF Letter to Appropriators On Friday, CEF sent letters to Appropriations Committee leaders <https://cef.org/wp-content/uploads/02.02.18-Increase-edfunding-NDD-caps.pdf> reiterating CEF’s ongoing efforts to urge Congress to raise the NDD cap and maintain parity with any increase in the defense cap; provide at least a proportional increase in the allocation of the Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee (it accounts for 31% of all NDD spending but in the past has not received 1/3 of increases); and use additional funds to increase investments in education. Our usual message. The letter went to the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittees (the letter to the House members is attached). FY 2019 Staff also said they will not be really working on fiscal year 2019 funding issues until after the FY 2018 bill is complete, even though the President’s FY 2019 budget request is due a week from today. Although the House Appropriations Committee is more likely to start holding hearings on the FY 2019 even while still working on FY 2018. HEA Some of you may be interested in this: Senate HELP Committee chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) on Thursday released a 12-page white paper outlining concepts for changing institutional accountability measures in the Higher Education Act <https://www.alexander.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/cfd3c3de-39b9-43dd-9075-2839970d3622/alexander-staff-accountability-white-paper.pdf> that could impact the types of studies that would qualify for student loans. They are requesting input due 5pm on February 15 to accountability@help.senate.gov <mailto:accountability@help.senate.gov>. Immigration Saw this in the Washington Post yesterday: Sens. John McCain (R-A.) and Chris Coons (D-DE) have introduced an immigration bill that would grant permanent legal status to “dreamers” and start "bolstering security along the U.S.-Mexico border.” I don’t have time to read up on this but maybe some of you have. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/02/04/new-bipartisan-immigration-plan-to-be-introduced-in-the-senate/ <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2018/02/04/new-bipartisan-immigration-plan-to-be-introduced-in-the-senate/> 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>