Couple of quick things: Infrastructure/SOTU One more thing about the Trump administration’s infrastructure plan — which everyone expects will get talked about a lot tonight, in the State of the Union address — my view is that it’s important to distinguish this proposal — both in scope/purpose and in how it is going to work — from 2009’s recovery act aka ARRA. The recovery act was basically direct spending not only infrastructure, but also education (why we hoped adult ed might be specifically targeted), health, and energy — and a lot more money: over $800 billion when it was all said and done. The draft infrastructure plan that has leaked proposes a considerably smaller federal investment — most of the trillion dollar investment comes from non-federal sources — and it’s smaller in scope. It could in fact, be a problem for us if it looks like the administration is going to want offsets to cover the $200 billion or whatever it ends up proposing to incentivize new infrastructure projects — that might impact NDD and education funding. See: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/three-key-questions-about-the-trump-infrastructure-plan <https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/three-key-questions-about-the-trump-infrastructure-plan> > Will the Plan Be Accompanied by Harmful Offsets? > > A major unknown around the Trump infrastructure plan is whether and how the Administration plans to offset the proposal’s cost. Leaked White House documents don’t answer the question, although Administration officials have suggested that their preferred approach includes cuts from other domestic spending, even beyond the infrastructure programs described above.[10] > > That creates the possibility that any potential benefits of an infrastructure package would be offset — or more than offset — by the damage caused by painful cuts elsewhere. HEA CEF reports that the Senate HELP Committee is in the midst of a series of hearings on issues pertaining to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. This morning the Committee held a hearing titled “Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Accountability and Risk to Taxpayers <https://www.help.senate.gov/hearings/reauthorizing-the-higher-education-act-accountability-and-risk-to-taxpayers>” and next week, February 6, at 10am they are holding a hearing called “Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Improving College Affordability” (witnesses have not yet been announced), which may be of interest. Meetings I’ve got CEF meetings with Senate Appropriations Subcommittee staff tomorrow. We’ll be making our usual pitch: eliminate the sequester on non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding and raise the NDD cap by the same amount of any increase in the defense cap; provide the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee with its fair share of any increase in NDD funding; and encourage the Subcommittee to prioritize education programs with its additional allocation. For adult education to have a chance at an increased federal investment in the final 2018 spending bill, all of these things would need to happen... As I’ve said before, these aren’t program or issue specific meetings, but they all know I represent NCL, and I’ll have a chance to share any new data of note if any of you have anything new on ROI or other information directly related to the federal investment in adult ed (or harms caused by the lack of a sufficient investment). Enjoy the speech tonight! Jeff