NCL members, Hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving, Here’s some of what’s going on in D.C. As usual, I’m cribbing a lot from CEF's most recent update… any mistakes are mine, however. Congressional to-Do List Congress is back in Washington this week with a pretty intense to do list, including: Senate floor consideration of their tax reform bill (the House, as you know, has already passed their bill); A budget deal to raise the appropriations caps on defense and non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding for at least fiscal year 2018; A third disaster relief bill; Renewing (or not) some key surveillance powers used by the National Security Agency that are about to expire; Possibly doing something about DACA/DREAMERs; and Reauthorizing funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). And finally, of course, of most immediate importance for us, Congress needs to pass an omnibus appropriations bill for 2018 providing full-year government funding at whatever level is eventually set (with the assumption that the cap deal gets done and raises the levels somewhat.) Trump is meeting with top congressional leaders at the White House tomorrow to talk about this. Don’t forget he also still wants his wall… Budget Deal to Raise the Caps From Sheryl: "While negotiations are going on behind closed doors, rumors abound. We don’t know how much credence to give them, but people are saying that while Democrats continue to push for parity in raising NDD caps by the same amount as defense caps – the 'parity principle' that has been a cornerstone of the previous cap-raising deals – Republicans want a deal that eliminates the discretionary sequester for both categories for two years. As you can see from the table below, that type of deal provides a far greater increase for defense than for NDD spending – increasing defense by $54 billion and NDD by only $37 billion. That is because one third of the non-defense sequester cuts are from mandatory programs, and the mandatory sequester would continue (there is virtually no eligible mandatory defense spending to sequester, so 99% of the defense sequester comes from the discretionary side)." 2018 Appropriations Last week the Senate Appropriations Committee released its last four draft fiscal year 2018 bills. They used 2017 cap levels as a placeholder for the amount of spending it was proposing for 2018, except that the defense bill is over the defense cap by $70 billion. Were it to be enacted at that level without a change in the cap, the bill would trigger a 13% across-the-board sequester of discretionary defense funding. So that’s not gong to work. As noted above, what is eventually going to happen is that a big omnibus spending bill is going to be drafted, once they make a cap deal. But that’s not imminent, so at some point soon Congress will need to pass a new Continuing Resolution (CR) before the current one expires on December 8, because there is no way they’ll have a bill ready by then. The appropriations committees will need at least three to four weeks to write these bills, and they can’t really produce that until the cap deal is done (although I understand staff has started working on it). I think when this is all said and done, adult ed under WIOA get level-funded. But we need to stay vigilant, and we need to pay attention to other relevant programs. Disaster Relief This week, the House Appropriations subcommittees are holding a total of eight hearings this week on disaster funding (not the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee, though). There is a lot of contentiousness over this that spills into the other discussions regarding 2018 appropriations. I was in a meeting two weeks ago where this was apparent. A Senate staffer told us they were concerned that Texas wasn’t getting it’s fair share compared to Puerto Rico (!) Tax Bill Not a direct issue for us, although worth following. I imagine those of you at organizations that rely heavily on tax-deductible donations may be concerned about the impact it may have on donations. And of course everyone may be concerned about the general terribleness of it all. One thing that is clear is that virtually everyone agrees that whatever they end up with will balloon the deficit. This will put intense pressure down the road in future years to make budget cuts to entitlements as well as discretionary spending, such as adult ed, especially when Democrats are back in power and every Republican starts caring about the deficit again. Right now, it’s clear there aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass their bill. In particular, Republicans have to deal with three of their own who despise Trump, and aren't likely to face voters again: Sens. John McCain, Bob Corker and Jeff Flake. Corker and Flake, in particular, are complaining a lot in the press about how the bill increases the deficit. Other folks on the fence, reportedly: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) Sen. Susan Collins of (R-Maine) Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) If Senate Republicans somehow pull this off, they'll immediately begin trying to reconcile their bill with the very different House bill. DACA Because it involves a must-pass bill, Democrats are going to try to leverage the 2018 omnibus to press for a codification of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program into law. No one has explicitly threatened to withhold votes for a 2018 spending bill without a DACA measure, but both House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have vowed to save the program legislatively before lawmakers leave Washington for the year. Senator Durbin was saying the same thing on the Sunday chat shows yesterday. Moderate Republicans are also in support. We’ll have to see whether they stick to their positions on this. Jeff Jeff Carter Cell: (202) 374-4387 | @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>