On Thursday, the House passed, along party lines, a nearly $620 billion appropriations package, encompassing seven bills, including the Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education measure.
House Democrats have described this measure as an opportunity to make up for years of chronic underfunding for important domestic programs, which have been further strained by the pandemic. House Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) said in a statement, “together, our transformative and historic funding increases will create good-paying jobs, grow opportunity for the middle class and small businesses and provide a lifeline for working families and the vulnerable.”
On the other hand, House Republicans were united in their opposition, stating that the overall proposal shortchanges the military and contains superfluous spending on domestic programs. Another major sticking point for the Republicans was that the bill omits Hyde Amendment language related to federal funding for abortions, which will all but guarantee no Republican support in the Senate, thus killing any prospects for this passing in the upper chamber.
The Labor-HHS-Education portion of the overall bill remained largely unchanged from the version considered by the Appropriations Committee earlier this month. It provides $14.7 billion for the Department of Labor, an increase of $2.2 billion above the FY 2021 level, and a total of $102.8 billion for the Department of Education, an increase of $29.3 billion above the FY 2021 level. More specifically, the Perkins Basic State Grant received a $50 million increase over the FY 2021 level, and $30 million above what the President recommended in his budget proposal in May, for a total funding level of $1.38 billion. The bill also matched the President's request for a $100 competitive grant program to carry out evidence-based middle and high school career and technical education innovation programs, although few details are included about what this program would entail.
Aside from funding, there was language included in the bill that would expand the definition of an “eligible institution” under Perkins to include registered apprenticeship programs that have also been accredited by the Department of Education. This is an important shift since this definition is used to distribute the postsecondary portion of Perkins CTE funding and could have unintended consequences. To that end, we have been in constant contact with both House and Senate Committee staff to ensure that this harmful proposal does not become law.
Next Steps
Although next steps are largely unknown, it is safe to say that action won’t pick up in the Senate anytime soon. The Senate has largely been focusing on the bipartisan infrastructure package they successfully negotiated earlier this week, and also the framework surrounding an upcoming budget reconciliation package, putting the normal appropriations process on the back burner. It is likely that the FY 2022 appropriations will not be wrapped up prior to the September 30 end-of-fiscal-year deadline, thus requiring at least one continuing resolution into the winter. We also expect that the process in the Senate will not follow the traditional route of bill introduction and committee consideration before heading to the Senate floor. Instead, it will likely be pre-negotiated before being introduced and then immediately move to a conference committee with the House to work out the differences between the two proposals. As the events continue to unfold, we will be analyzing their impacts here on our CTE Policy Watch Blog, so please continue to check back for updates!
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