As I mentioned earlier this week, the Senate will start considering a combined FY 2019 Defense and Labor-HHS-Education funding bill today. At this point, there doesn’t appear to be any expectation that there will be many education-related amendments. Sarah Abernathy made the good point in her last CEF update that the Senate philosophy for appropriations bills this year has been to accept only amendments with bipartisan support and, most notably, to oppose policy riders and partisan amendments. I personally don’t think it would be a bad idea at all to call/write your senator this week and next expressing support and appreciation for the $25 million dollar increase to WIOA Title II in their Labor-HHS-Education funding bill. However, as I’ve noted many times before this year, we are headed to a continuing resolution (CR) whatever happens in the Senate. There is not going to be a final Senate and House approved Labor-HHS-Education funding bill before the deadline of September 30. So they’ll use a CR to keep the government from shutting down, — this vehicle more-or-less freezes funding in place at the FY 2018 levels in order to keep the government open when the FY 2018 expires on September 30. The House has not yet set a date to consider its education funding bill on the floor, and Sarah thinks it’s quite possible that the House may not take up its bill before the 30th. But, in the meantime, it will be great to have an approved bill coming out of the Senate with that increase in it — sets things up advantageously for the negotiations on the FY 2019 funding vehicle later in the fall. CEF sent letters to both Senate and House Appropriations Committee leaders urging support for more education funding during the amendment process and requested the highest possible allocation for the bill when the House and Senate negotiate a conference agreement. Again, this latter point very important if we are to retain the proposed increase in the Senate bill. Letters attached. 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>