Update From CEF (Center for Education Funding)

Policy Intelligence and Education News

• FY 2025 subcommittee allocations coming soon – House Appropriations Committee chair Tom Cole (R-OK) said yesterday he hopes to give the 12 subcommittees their allocations for fiscal year (FY) 2025 funding as soon as next week, but it depends on first getting approval from Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). It’s not clear if he and Senate Appropriations Committee chair Patty Murray (D-WA) have jointly agreed on totals for defense and for non-defense discretionary spending, or whether that House and Senate will start making up bills that don’t sum to the same total, which makes eventually reaching agreement much harder. Cole’s goal is to have all bills ready by beginning of June and to have all 12 bills marked up by the subcommittees before the August recess. I’m noting that he did not say his goal was to have all the bills approved by the full Committee or considered on the floor by then, which is usually the timing for funding bills in the House. In election years, Congress has been delaying votes on funding bills until a lame duck session after the election. This schedule would require Congress to approve a continuing resolution that extends current government funding after the October 1 start of FY 2025. Continuing resolutions usually extend all funding at their existing level, but that is not automatic. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is demanding that Johnson commit that any extension will include a 1% across-the-board cut – something Johnson has not agreed to – as one condition of her continued support for the Speaker.

• What does the 302(b) allocation mean? Generally, the Appropriations Committee does not publish the 12 allocations – known as the 302(b) allocations – until it takes up the first bill at full Committee. Some of the “cardinals” – the Subcommittee chairs – will say that their allocation has been cut or increased (increases are going to be very few this year), so we get a sense of what’s likely to be in the bill. Last year, the 302(b) allocation for the Labor-HHS-Education bill was cut below the FY 2023 level, but those amounts are not the full story. The Congressional Budget Office table tracking FY 2024 appropriations shows the total under the Fiscal Responsibility Act caps on defense and non-defense, and emergencies, but it doesn’t show the other adjustments that make additional funding available. The extra adjustments – money being cut from a mandatory program and spent on a discretionary one, money rescinded from one program used for another, etc. – make it hard to compare the bill’s total dollar amount from one year to the next just by looking at the 302(b) allocation. We can know that the higher the total for non-defense discretionary funding, the better chance that the Labor-HHS-Education bill will get an increase, or not be cut. The higher the 302(b) allocation for that bill, the better chance that education funding is increased or not cut.

1. II.  Advocacy

• Sign-on letter sent in support of largest possible funding for Labor-HHS-Education bill – Thanks to the 57 CEF members who joined CEF in signing the community letter with almost 700 signers asking the House and Senate Appropriations leaders to provide the highest possible allocation to the FY 2025 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bills. The letter was sent on May 6, and is posted on CEF’s website here, posted on X, and shared with education press. The huge number of signers representing the range of programs in the bill sends a strong message.

• Coming soon – sign-up for CEF’s July 24 Hill Day – Each summer, CEF spends an afternoon holding Hill meetings (in-person and over Zoom) with congressional education staff to advocate for education funding. All CEF members are welcome to participate, including interns and grassroots members from the states; if we know they are attending, we will put them on a team that meets with offices from their state when possible. Each team of 5-6 is led by an experienced member of CEF’s Hill Teams and Advocacy Committee and meets with about 3 offices over the afternoon. I’ll be sharing the preliminary sign-up shortly so we get a sense of how many will participate, since that dictates how many meetings to schedule. We’ll provide training during the quarterly committee meeting on June 14, and again at the beginning of the Hill Day on July 24.