WiRSA Update - April 23, 2024

Update From CEF (Center for Education Funding)

• I.  Policy Intelligence and Education News

  • House and Senate guidance on FY 2025 Labor-HHS-Education requests and submitting public testimony – With the hope it is helpful, below are links to the various deadlines and guidelines for Members of Congress to submit requests for fiscal year (FY) 2025 appropriations and for outside organizations to submit testimony to the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittees.

  • House – guidelines for language and programmatic requests for all appropriations bills. The House Committee has not yet shared guidance for requesting community project funding (aka, earmarks) or which bills will have earmarks this year.

  • Guidelines for submitting public witness testimony by May 3 to the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee. They aren’t planning an actual hearing this year.

  • Senate – guidelines for submitting programmatic funding and language requests, with links for each subcommittee’s list of which accounts are available for earmark requests. The deadline is May 14 for Senators to submit requests to the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee.

  • Instructions for submitting outside witness testimony by May 25 to the Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee.

  • House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee staffers – Also in case it is helpful, below is a list of the Appropriations Committee staffers with primary responsibility for education funding. We have most of them scheduled as guest speakers at CEF Friday meetings in the coming month.

  • House Republican staff – while Emily Goff is on maternity leave, the staffers are Laura Stagno (K-12) laura.stagno@mail.house.gov, and Kathryn Salmon (higher education) Kathryn.Salmon@mail.house.gov

  • House Democratic staff – Philip Tizzani Philip.Tizzani@mail.house.gov

  • Senate Democratic staff – Mark Laisch (K-12) Mark_Laisch@appro.senate.gov; Amanda Beaumont (higher education) amanda_beaumont@appro.senate.gov; and Mike Gentile (staff director) Mike_Gentile@appro.senate.gov

  • Senate Republican staff – Emily Slack Emily_Slack@appro.senate.gov

  • FY 2025 caps on non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding – Below is a table showing the caps on defense and non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding set for FY 2024 and 2025 by the Fiscal Responsibility Act, plus the various budget adjustments that provided extra NDD funding for FY 2024. These sources of funding outside the caps are not in the law but were part of a handshake deal; the first deal for the initial set of adjustments was with then-Speaker McCarthy when the law was enacted in June, and the revised set of adjustments was this winter with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The revisions ended up providing the same NDD total as originally planned FY 2024 but with lower amounts of both extra “emergency” funding (what Friday’s guest speaker characterized as “emergency to base” funding because it is planned emergency funding used for regular needs) and of CHIMPS (Changes to Mandatory Program Spending – cuts to mandatory spending that the appropriations bills make and then use the mandatory savings for discretionary spending that is not counted under the cap). Presumably, Congress will want to keep those same levels of emergency-to-base funding and CHIMPS for FY 2025, but Congress won’t have the same amount of the other adjustments available for FY 2025. That means either a sizeable cut in total NDD funding or that Congress will need to renegotiate additional adjustments for FY 2025. The actual caps for defense and NDD funding increase by only 1 percent from FY 2024 to FY 2025, and there will be pressure to provide more funding for each category at the same time that hardline conservatives will want to keep spending as low as possible. CEF will continue to advocate the highest possible level of NDD funding, the highest possible allocation for the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bills (see the sign-on letter below), and the highest possible funding for education and education-related programs.

• Submitting testimony to House Labor-HHS-Education on FY 2025 budget – The House Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee will be accepting written testimony on the fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget from “interested public witnesses” (this means organizations and institutions like CEF and its members!) until May 3. Oddly, the Subcommittee says it is not planning to hold its customary public witness hearing “at this time;” the Subcommittee usually holds a hearing with a few representative witnesses. I encourage you to consider submitting testimony supporting education funding – CEF did last year, and it is an easy way to demonstrate broad support for these investments in a year when Congress will face tight budget constraints. The instructions for submitting testimony are here. The Subcommittee will be holding a Member Day hearing, but the announcement for it has a mistake about the date, so it’s unclear when it will be. It seems like it will be between April 25 and May 7. If there is a Representative you are working with on funding for key priorities, you could encourage them to testify or submit written testimony. The Senate Subcommittee has not yet posted its FY 2025 guidance for submitting outside witness testimony.