Loading ...Weekly Legislative Update on Education
Date: May 10, 2013
By Washington Partners, LLC
Congress returned to the Capitol last week with a long to-do list and really did try to get to work. The Senate Judiciary Committee convened a mark-up of an immigration reform bill that is expected to continue throughout the month. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee tried repeatedly to vote on the nomination of Tom Perez as the new Secretary of Labor, but Republican objections put that action on hold.
On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) tried…
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After months of negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators known as the “Gang of Eight” released a comprehensive immigration reform bill on April 16th. The bill would allow the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship while providing for additional security along the nation’s southern border.
After Secretary Duncan’s dual appearances on Capitol Hill last week to defend and explain the President’s budget plan for education, it was Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sebelius’ turn to appear before the same appropriations panels. While she received a warm, bipartisan welcome, the same could not be said for parts of her HHS budget.
On April 10, President Obama sent his FY 2014 budget proposal to Capitol Hill. It was two months late and followed the approval of separate FY 2014 budget resolutions in both the House and Senate. Given its tardy arrival, it will be interesting to see how the Administration’s plan influences the appropriations process. In theory, the President’s budget represents a middle ground between the House and Senate plans. He has stated his hope that by offering cuts in entitlement programs,…
Last Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made his second trip to Capitol Hill to defend the President’s FY 2014 budget plan for the Department of Education. This time he appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (LHHS). Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) gave him a warm welcome, as did the new Ranking Member on the Subcommittee, Jerry Moran (R-KS). Actually, there were kind words all around for a cabinet official the Members view as caring, energetic and…
After adopting the Senate-passed Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget bill and a budget resolution for FY 2014, House Members raced out of the Capitol for a two-week recess. Their colleagues in the Senate remain in town, locked in a vote-a-rama to pass their first budget resolution in four years, but once that is completed, they too will run for the exits.
After months of anticipation, today is the day. The sequester has been triggered. Congress and the White House, in spite of reassuring the public for months that it was just “too awful” and they would never let it happen, failed to come up with an alternative. Because of a policy known as forward funding, most education programs will not feel the impact of the sequester until the fall. But not all programs. Head Start and Impact Aid will feel the cuts immediately in the remaining months of this fiscal year.
Unless there is a last minute agreement reached by the President and party leaders today, sequestration will occur at 11:59 pm tonight, Friday, 3/1. We will know more about the impact on states in the coming days.
The start of each Congressional recess brings a mad dash out of House and Senate office buildings toward surrounding airports. Members of Congress head home to their states and districts or board planes for trips around the globe. This recess was no exception. There were delegations heading to Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Taiwan, Switzerland and Cuba, just to name a few—all “fact finding missions” designed to educate elected officials about their work as Senators and Representatives.
The 113th Congress has three critical fiscal issues to resolve over the next two months and not much time to get the job done. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced last week that the government will “run out of money” to pay the interest on the enormous federal debt by the first of March, if not sooner.
During the third week of the Lame Duck session, Congress made little progress on avoiding going over the so-called “fiscal cliff.” The GOP leadership in the House of Representatives did send a counter-offer to the President’s proposal that had been labeled a non-starter by Speaker of the House John Boehner (D-OH) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Though it did not include an agreement to raise taxes, the proposal did include about $800 billion in “tax revenues.”
By 
Washington that it feels like Capitol Hill is perched on a precipice, about to fall into a deep, black hole. In spite of that harrowing posture, after two weeks in town for its lame duck session, Members of Congress and the White House seem to be moving further apart on resolution of the grand fiscal crisis versus closer together.…
Education has not been front and center with the public during this election season as it was four years ago when anxiety about the No Child left Behind Act (NCLB) hit a fever pitch. Few candidates running for the Congress at that time left a position against NCLB out of their platform. This year, NCLB is rarely mentioned in state and district contests, but education has been discussed repeatedly by President Obama and Governor Romney in debates, on their websites and at live events.
House Adult Literacy Caucus Co-chairs Phil Roe (R-TN) and Rubén Hinojosa (D-TX) have made public statements in support of adult education and family literacy as part of their efforts to raise awareness during National AEFL Week. Are your local, state, and/or federal public officials speaking from the podium or offering testimonials or other supportive remarks during National AEFL Week?
On its face, the deal struck by Leadership in the House and Senate last week related to federal spending for the next fiscal year seems to be evidence of a willingness to work together. Look a little deeper, however, and it is clear that politics played a large role in the negotiations that yielded an agreement to vote on a spending measure in September. The move will take the pressure off of the current Congress to make hard spending decisions.
The Congress inched closer to developing a Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget for the Department of Education last week with the House Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to mark up Chairman Denny Rehberg’s (R-MT) bill. It was a contentious event and education was not on center stage. Chairman Rehberg chose to eliminate all funding for programs authorized by the Affordable Care Act, in light of House action to repeal the statute last week. In fact, he eliminated funding for all but a…