Congress

Self-Promotion Sunday

/ The Old Crank

The Committee for Education Funding, a coalition of (mostly) national educational groups, released their annual response to the President’s 2014 budget proposal released on May 29th. (It was delayed due to the fact that the President’s budget was delayed.) This book is delivered to every member of Congress.

The section on the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA), which I wrote (hence the self-promotion) on behalf of the National Coalition for Literacy, is on page 133 at this link (or you can just click here for the AEFLA section alone). It’s really more of a revision/edit of last year’s section. This year we also included a short anecdote, contributed by another NCL member, to start things off, which hopefully provides readers with a sense of what this funding actually means to people.

Anyway, I wanted to mention it here because I figured that some of you may find a quick summary of adult literacy funding under AEFLA (i.e. Title II of WIA) to be useful in your own advocacy efforts.

It also gives me a chance to recommend the CEF book, which really serves as much more than just a response to the President’s budget—it includes a history of education funding over the last ten years for nearly every federal education program, and includes lots of charts and graphs making the case for the federal investment in education.

A Little Bit of News About WIA Reauthorization in the Senate

/ The Old Crank / 3 Comments

The (very) little I know about any work going on in the Senate on a Workforce Investment Act (WIA) reauthorization bill this session is mostly on background, but what I do know is pretty consistent with what was reported by Neil Bomberg for the National League of Cities (NLC) a couple of weeks ago.

Unlike the House bill passed earlier this year, we know the Senate bill will be a bipartisan effort, and leads on it are Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). According to NLC’s sources, Senators Murray and Isakson “are using last year’s Senate draft bill as the starting point for this year’s bill.” (I believe that is supposed to read “last session,” as the only recent Senate draft bill I’m aware of was released in 2011.) Although not perfect, most of my colleagues in adult education seemed to be reasonably happy with that older draft bill, while the recent House bill was universally panned.

There’s no timeline for the introduction and consideration of a Senate bill. NLC notes that it is unlikely that it would be introduced before June.

Migration Policy Institute Releases Analysis of Senate Immigration Reform Bill

/ The Old Crank

The Migration Policy Institute has just released a detailed review of S. 744, the immigration reform bill introduced in the Senate last week. It outlines the major provisions of the bill and compares it with the major provisions in immigration bills considered by the Senate in 2006 and 2007 (but not the 2010 Menendez-Leahy bill, S. 3932, that I wrote about here).

No Harm, No Foul

/ The Old Crank

(Updated Below)

Republicans in the House would like you to know that they haven’t really been hearing much about the sequester from their constituents.

From Roll Call this morning:

[W]hile the impacts are starting to appear in local media across the country, particularly near military bases, rank-and-file Republicans generally say they aren’t feeling much pressure yet, and they expect the sequester will simply stay in place.

“I think, generally speaking, people haven’t noticed,” said Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, noting that the flap about canceled White House tours is one exception.

“I’m not hearing anything at home, really,” said Rep. John Campbell. The California Republican said he’s been asked about the sequester more by the press than constituents. He said he heard from one contractor who said, “You know, we may lose a contract over this, but we’ll survive.”

Campbell said Republicans going home for the Easter break are going to be focused instead on touting the GOP plan to balance the budget.

I’m not surprised that many House Republicans haven’t heard much from their constituents about the sequester. Republican members of the House (and only Republicans were interview for this story) often represent wealthier districts where, in fact, the sequester probably won’t have much of an impact.

But this does raise the question: During the upcoming House and Senate Easter recess (March 25th – April 5th), what will members (on either side of the aisle) hear about it? Do grassroots organizations have their folks prepared to meet with lawmakers during the break? Have folks back home just resigned themselves to the idea that the cuts are here to stay? Will stories that are “starting to appear” in the local media become more frequent?

There could be a lack of urgency about the sequester because many programs have not been affected yet. WIA Title II Adult education funding, for example, will not be cut until July 1st, because like many (but not all) education programs, it’s forward funded. So adult education programs aren’t going to see the effects until new grant awards are made over the summer. Plus, depending on how states decide to distribute the cut, I suppose some programs may not even see much of a decrease.

But it’s still important, I think, to speak up about the importance of federal support for adult education in our communities now, even if the sequester effects haven’t settled in yet. Remember also that sequestration is a multi-year process, and will work very differently next year. Instead of across-the-board cuts to every program, in 2014-2021 the cut will be in the form of overall budget caps. Congress and the administration will then have to figure out how to live within those reduced caps. In other words, after 2013, there are no automatic, proportional cuts to discretionary programs like adult education. It will be up to the President and Congress to decide how much to cut from each program. They could even eliminate funding altogether for some. (For those interested in the gory details, I recommend the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities latest paper on how this all works.)

I also continue to fear that over time, pressure on states to find money to shore up other places where the sequester is affecting their budgets is going to result in reduced state support for adult education, much in the way that California school districts have been snatching funds from adult education to support K-12. Which means that this is also an important time to let state lawmakers know how important adult education is in your community.

The media pays a lot of attention to the political wrangling between the administration and Congress over making some kind of deal to roll back the sequester, but without strong constituent pressure—and soon—I can’t figure out why we should expect that anything will actually be done.

Update: More on the same theme, from Brian Beutler at TPM:

It’s been nearly three weeks since President Obama issued the sequestration order. Across the country, newspapers carry reports of furloughs, airport closings, children kicked out of Head Start. The consequences are beginning to snowball. But lawmakers have reacted to the bad news with a collective shrug.

In the same week Congress is expected to pass government funding legislation that effectively locks in sequestration until the end of September, an unexpected reality is dawning on Washington: as bad as sequestration is, and was intended to be, it’s not bad enough to do what it was designed to do.

That’s left Democrats resigned to malfunctioning and underfunded government in perpetuity, and Republicans confident they can weather the coming months and turn sequestration spending levels into a new normal. (my emphasis)