Legislation and Guidance
- House Passes Supplemental Bill with White House Approval
- Subcommittee Passes Labor-HHS-Education Spending Bill
- House Panel Passes Two Education Bills
- Farm Bill Officially Becomes Law
News
Legislation and Guidance
House Passes Supplemental Bill with White House Approval
Yesterday, the House passed a $183 billion emergency supplemental appropriations bill. The bill, which passed on two separate votes divided between war funding and domestic spending, is now ready to final consideration in the Senate. If passed without amendment, the President is expected to sign the bill, despite previous veto threats against any domestic spending included in the package.
The House first voted on a $162 billion amendment to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The measure passed by a vote of 268-155, with 151 Democrats and four Republicans voting against it. The House moved on to pass a $21 billion domestic spending package, by a vote of 416-12, with three Democrats and nine Republicans voting against it. While the bill closely resembles the Senate-passed version, there is one key difference.
While both bills include a moratorium on proposed Medicaid changes through April 1, 2009, the newly passed House version does not include any funding for rural schools. The supplemental bill that passed the Senate last month included $400 million for a one-year extension of the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act. This would ensure that rural school districts received much needed funds for the upcoming school year.
The last funds for the most recent extension of the Act were allocated last December. Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) included the extension in his earlier draft. While a number of Senators may want to add the provision back into the bill, the compromise House leaders reached with the White House could prevent any attempts to add more funding.
After continued negotiations with House leaders, the Bush administration released a Statement of Administration Policy that supports passage of the House version of the war supplemental spending bill, "because it is consistent with the principles laid out by the President for an acceptable bill.” The White House previously levied a veto threat against any supplemental that included domestic spending.
Following the recent flooding in the Midwest, House leaders added funding for disaster relief throughout the affected areas as part of the domestic spending amendment. Not wanting to be blamed for failing to aid natural disaster relief again, the President seems more amenable to this domestic package. However, any additional funding could compromise the deal currently in place. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) seems optimistic that he can pass the bill without additional amendments, but he will not make any guarantees.
Resources
Vicki Needham, “House Passes War Supplemental; Reid Optimistic but Says No Guarantees,” Congress Now, June 19, 2008.
Josh Rogin, “Senate Set to Clear Supplemental,” CQ Today, June 19, 2008.
Subcommittee Passes Labor-HHS-Education Spending Bill
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS-Education) approved, by voice vote, a $153.1 billion fiscal year 2009 (FY09) spending bill that reverses a number of Bush Administration cuts to education programs. The bill is $7.8 billion more than President Bush requested and about $8 billion more than the agencies are receiving in the current year. The full House Appropriations Committee plans to markup the bill next Wednesday.
The bill would provide $7.1 billion for the Head Start early education program, an increase of $242 million from last year's funding levels, and $15.1 billion for Title I grants for low-income children, an increase of $665 million over last year’s levels. The Title I grants would provide aid for schools failing to meet No Child Left Behind academic standards. The bill would also reject the Administration’s effort to cut $281 million from after-school program funding, instead providing a $50 million increase over last year for a total of $1.1 billion.
There would also be a $604 million increase for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part B state grants program. Following last year’s massive cut to Reading First, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) decided to call for zero funding for the president’s prized program. The labor provision of the bill provides a $107 million increase for the Job Corps, which provides at-risk youth with occupational and employment skills.
The Senate has not held its markup yet, but is planning to begin next week. Meanwhile, the Senate has approved its 302(b) allocation table. Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd (D-WV) is allocating $153.1 billion for Labor-HHS-Education, the same as the House. The House Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee has not released a complete list of its approved numbers yet. We will continue to follow the process and update you as soon as preliminary numbers are released.
Resources
Stephen Langel, “House Labor-HHS Appropriators Back $8 Billion Spending Increase Over Bush Plan,” Congress Now, June 19, 2008.
House Panel Passes Two Education Bills
On Wednesday, the House Education and Labor Committee overwhelmingly passed House Resolution 3036, the No Child Left Inside Act, and House Resolution 2343, the Education Begins at Home Act. After a year’s worth of focus on student loans and higher education, K-12 advocates were refreshed to see the committee address these issues. Aside from school facilities funding, these bills are the first significant pieces of elementary and secondary education legislation to pass through the committee this year.
House Resolution 3036, which passed by a vote of 37-8, would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to allow states to use federal education dollars to increase “environmental literacy” in curricula for kindergarten through grade 12. The bill would authorize the Education Department to award grants to nongovernmental organizations in order to facilitate the development of environmental education through programs such as teacher training. The bill also seeks to establish the Office for Environmental Literacy within the Education Department. There is a companion bill in the Senate, S. 1981, which has been referred to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
House Resolution 2343, which passed by a voice vote, would provide grants to states to facilitate early-learning programs through home visitation, facilitated through the Department of Health and Human Services’ Early Head Start program. The bill would also direct the Defense Department to provide grants for visiting military families. This provision falls under the jurisdiction of the House Armed Services Committee, which is expected to consider the legislation at a later date. The legislation does not have a Senate companion.
Resources
Stephen Langel, “House Panel Approves Two Education Bills,” Congress Now, June 18, 2008.
Farm Bill Officially Becomes Law
The long awaited Farm Bill finally became law in its entirety on Wednesday as Congress voted to override a Presidential veto. The House voted 317-109 to override the veto of House Resolution 6124, the most recent version of the Farm Bill. The Senate followed suit, 80-14, several hours later. Both chambers exceeded the two-thirds majority needed to enact a law over a presidential veto. This is second override of the President’s veto of the agriculture authorization legislation.
Congress sent a House Resolution 2419 to the White House in May after both chambers passed a finalized Farm Bill. However, due to a clerical error in the House, an entire trade-related section was erroneously omitted from the bill the President received. The President vetoed that measure, and Congress overrode the veto, making 14 of the original 15 titles of the bill law (P.L.110-234). But the trade provisions, inadvertently deleted during enrollment, were essentially in legal limbo.
Congressional leaders decided to fix the problem by giving the full legislation a new bill number and sending it back to the White House. After Congress cleared the bill, the President vetoed it on Wednesday, reiterating his criticisms that the $289 billion price tag was excessive. Wasting little time, both chambers overrode the veto the same day, officially making all 15 titles of the bill law.
The final bill includes an expansion of the fresh fruit and vegetable program into all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Each state and D.C. will receive 1percent of the total annual appropriation with the remaining funds allocated based on population. Participating schools should have no less than 50 percent of the student body eligible for free and reduced price lunch. States should show priority to the schools with the highest percentage of these students until they have exhausted all such schools. The bill also directs the Secretary of Agriculture to allow each State to reserve such funding as the Secretary determines to be necessary to administer the program in the State (with adjustments for the size of the State and the grant amount), but not to exceed the amount required to pay the costs of 1 full-time coordinator for the program in the State.
The bill authorizes an increasing amount of annual appropriations through 2012. The proposed scale of funding is $40 million to go out on October 1, 2008, with an additional $65 million in July of 2009. In July 2010, $101 million is authorized, and $150 million in July 2011. From that point, the following year’s appropriations should be based on the previous 12 months’ changes to food prices and other economical considerations. Despite the authorization set out in the bill, the actual allocation will be up to appropriators from year to year.
Resources
Aliya Sternstein, “Farm Bill Becomes Law After Lawmakers Override Veto,” CQ Today, June 18, 2008.
News
Supreme Court Decision on Age Discrimination
This week, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of employers in an important age discrimination case. In Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (06-1505), the Court addressed whether an employee alleging age discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 has the burden of persuasion in establishing that action was based on “reasonable factors other than age.” Simply put, can employers use “business reasonableness” as pretext for laying someone off due to age and then shift the burden of disproving the pretext in court on the ex-employee? In a 7-1 decision, with Justice Stephen Breyer recusing himself for conflict of interest, the Court held that “an employer defending [an age discrimination] claim under the ADEA bears […] the burden of persuasion for the “reasonable factors other than age.”
The ADEA prohibits employers from taking any action which “in any way . . . would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s age.” Congress based the ADEA’s substantive prohibitions on an earlier version of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion, or national origin.
The prohibition has a list of exemptions in the law, including the exemption “where age is a bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the particular business, or where the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age . . . .” Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory argued that the burden of proving this exemption should fall with the employee, but the Court disagreed. As a principle of legal construction, the burden of proving a statutory exemption falls on the party seeking its benefit. In this case, Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory sought the benefit of the exemption, but also tried to free itself of the burden of persuasion. This, the Court determined, violated both statutory construction and the intent of the ADEA, which is to shield older employees against such discrimination. “We have to read it the way Congress wrote it” wrote Justice Souter for the majority.
Resources
“Meacham v. Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (Outside Source),” SCOUTS WIKI, Visited June 20, 2008,
Linda Greenhouse, “A Supreme Court Victory for Older Workers,” New York Times, June 20, 2008.
“Today’s Opinions, 6.19.08 (Outside Source)” SCOTUS Blog, June 20, 2008, visited June 20, 2008.
Obama Advisor Addresses Education Advocates
Last week the Committee for Education Funding (CEF) hosted Lisa Graham Keegan, education adviser for Senator McCain. This week, CEF hosted Linda Darling-Hammond, education adviser for Senator Obama and the Charles E. Ducommon Professor of Education at Stanford University. Professor Hammond began by quoting Obama's recent education speech in Thornton Colorado to emphasize the economic and international importance of education.
At this defining moment in our history, they've never needed that chance [for a quality education] more. In a world where good jobs can be located anywhere there's an Internet connection— where a child in Denver is competing with children in Beijing and Bangalore — the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge. Education is the currency of the Information Age, no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success but a prerequisite.
After framing the importance of education, which all at CEF assumes, Professor Hammond provided some details of Senator Obama's four priority education topics:
- Early childhood education;
- K-12;
- Higher education; and
- Recruiting, preparing, retaining, and rewarding teachers
Senator Obama's early childhood education plans include critical support to young children and their parents placing emphasis and early care and education for infants in order to prepare them for kindergarten. The Senator, she said, would quadruple Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding. He will also seek to provide affordable and high quality child care. Critically, Professor Hammond emphasized that Obama takes a "whole child" approach to education, that the work is a social, community, family and education matter, not just a schoolhouse matter.
The Senator's K-12 platform is ambitious but vague. Professor Hammond discussed how Senator Obama believes that Congress should retain No Child Left Behind, but that the law requires significant improvements in the areas of school identification, intervention and more. Professor Hammond took time to discuss and endorse growth models, but when CEF member questions became technical, she noted that many of the details are still being developed and that it is still too early for any policy commitments. Professor Hammond also spent considerable time discussing the dropout crisis by detailing the economic and social impact of school dropouts on the states and nation. When asked about career technical education, Professor Hammond stated that the campaign staff are working on plans to tie higher education and workforce issues closer together, but that she has not focused on this issue and that CTE policy details are pending.
Teacher professional development was the most important theme. Professor Hammond discussed how Senator Obama will focus on the recruitment, preparation, retention and rewarding teachers. The recruitment will involve a new teacher service scholarship that will cover four years of undergraduate and two years of graduate teacher education in exchange for at least four years of work in high need locations. The Senator will focus on teacher residency programs and will seek to create voluntary national performance assessments for new educators in order to assure that they are effective teachers as soon as they begin. She discussed how Obama plans to improve mentoring programs in order to support and retain new teachers and how he plans to promote new and innovative ways to increase teacher pay. How he will go about doing this is not clear, but it is certain that any "merit-pay" plan, if at all, will require the teacher union's stamp of approval, a critical body of support for the Democratic Party.
As with Lisa Graham Keegan's presentation to CEF last week, Professor Hammond provided a broad overview of the candidate’s positions, but the details sought by the knowledgeable CEF members were not yet available. The details, she promised, are under development. As this happens, we will provide continued review and analysis for both Senator McCain and Senator Obama.
Resources
"Education," Barack Obama.com (Outside Source), Issues, Education, June 20, 2008.
"Darling-Hammond, Linda (Outside Source)" Stanford University School of Education, Faculty and Research, visited June 20, 2008.
