House Subcommittee Slashes Next Year’s Funding for Education Programs

National Institute for Literacy

Policy Update

REPORT FROM WASHINGTON, D.C.

House Subcommittee Protects Most Literacy Funding

July 11

The House Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittee passed Chairman John Porter's (R-Illinois) proposal to cut Education Department spending by $4.4 billion next year (FY96), including the elimination of all funding for 176 education and social programs. While education funding was cut by 18 percent overall, adult education and literacy programs were cut by only 11 percent, as follows:

                      Current (FY95) funding           FY96 House proposal (in millions)

Basic grants to the states             252             250
Even Start Family Literacy             102             102
Library literacy                         8               0
Literacy for homeless adults            10               0
Literacy for prisoners                   5               4
National Institute for Literacy          5               0 
State Literacy Resource Centers          8               0
Workplace literacy partnerships         19               0

Next, the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. Robert Livington (R-Louisiana) will revise the bill on July 20. Then the full House of Representatives will vote on it. Meanwhile, Senators Mark Hatfield (R-Oregon) and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) are working on an initial Senate version of the bill. After the bills pass the House and Senate, they will be merged into one bill. Literacy provisions that are included in the Senate bill that are not in the House bill can be included in the final bill that will reach the President. He has stated that he would veto the House subcommittee's bill.

The FY95 rescissions bill, which would rescind $6 million from workplace literacy and eliminate funds for literacy for homeless adults and State Literacy Resource Centers, is stalled in the Senate due to the objections of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) and Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun (D-Illinois). The Senate may reconsider it. If the rescissions bill does not become law, then $16.5 billion in further cuts will be made in the FY96 appropriations. These cuts will come primarily from programs under the jurisdiction of the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education and Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development subcommittees.