Capitol Hill lawmakers continue to put the “fun” in
dysfunctional as negotiations about how to fund the government for another year
and whether to impeach the President leave little room for meaningful,
bipartisan policymaking. As your eyes and ears on the Hill AASA is definitely
concerned that unless the parties come together quickly we could see a shutdown
or the passage of a continuing resolution for an entire year, which would mean
that we would see no increases in critical formula programs between FY19 to
FY20.
The reason a year-long CR is looking more likely is that
Democrats and Republicans are too far apart on spending levels and cannot find
a path forward when it comes to funding the President’s border wall. The Senate’s Labor HHS Education spending bill
for FY2020 is now stalled and may not move for a while. Two major problems are
causing this situation: 1) the ban on “poison pill” riders that Congress agreed
to in this summer’s budget deal; and 2) the very low allocations that the bill
received to use for spending. The first issue blew-up in early September at the
Labor HHS Education Appropriations Subcommittee mark-up for the FY2020 bill
where Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) announced plans to introduce an
amendment that Republicans claimed fell afoul of the agreed to ban on “poison
pill” amendments. This caused the Subcommittee mark-up to be cancelled and the
full Appropriations Committee mark-up, scheduled for later that week, to be
cancelled subsequently.
The second issue came to a head when Appropriations
Committee Ranking Member Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced an amendment in
Committee that would have increased the 302(b) allocations for the Labor HHS
Education bill. Senate Democrats have complained loudly that the current
allocation (plus additional budgetary gimmicks) would equal only a 1% increase
in available funding over last year. Additionally, Senate Appropriations
Subcommittee Chair Roy Blunt’s (R-MO) decision to spend the vast majority of
that 1% on increasing the National Institutes for Health by $3 billion has left
little for appropriators to spend on other key education, health and labor
programs. Leahy’s amendment failed on a party line vote.
Later in September Republicans unveiled their version of the
FY2020 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill which would level-fund virtually
all K-12 education programs, save for charter schools and Title IV in ESSA. Rather
than trying to run it again through the normal committee process, Senate
Appropriations Chair Richard Shelby (R-AL) decided to bypass the Appropriations
Committee entirely and move the bill to the floor, coupling it with the bills
covering Defense, Energy and Water funding. According to media reports, he
suggested that Democrats would have to agree to this move or run the risk of
looking like they oppose defense programs. Despite that pressure, nearly all
Democrats opposed a procedural vote to close debate and Shelby’s effort failed.
Upon seeing that there would not be a legitimate negotiation
in the Senate, the House voted to pass a Continuing Resolution bill quickly,
which the Senate passed the following week. The President signed the continuing
resolution, which avoids a government shutdown and punts the funding deadline
to November 21st to allow the two chambers and parties more time to
figure out a way forward on funding. Given that the House Democrats passed
bills proposing $1 billion in new money for both IDEA and Title I it would be a
huge disappointment if we receive level funding for these critical funding
streams next year because no agreement on funding levels can be reached.
That’s all the “fun”ding news for now! Follow us on twitter
or check out the Leading Edge blog for additional updates.