Appropriations Debate Continues Despite Passage (1/4/2008)

The federal appropriations process is always an adventure. This week, the House Appropriations Committee explained that the omnibus spending tables posted on the House Rules Committee web site overstated the amount of money appropriated for the U.S. Department of Education (ED) and other agencies.

According to the Budget Policy office at ED, Congress incorrectly applied the 1.747% across the board cuts to advanced funding accounts and may have incorrectly calculated some of the cuts. As a result, in some instances, the figures released by the House Appropriations Committee underestimated the impact of the 1.747% across the board cuts. For example, the House Appropriations Committee reported that the Career-Technical Education State Grants would receive $1,174,730,000 for a decrease of .58% from FY07, but that ED’s revised budget table reported an appropriation of $1,160,911,000 for a decrease of 1.75% from FY07. Likewise, funding for Part B grants to states under IDEA will not rise 2.4% as reported in the House’s tables, but only 1.53% to $10,947,511,000 according to ED.

A staffer at ED also noted that it will revise the budget tables on ED’s web site, dated December 19, 2007, because it contains small errors that have since been corrected. ED, however, has not revised the posted table as of Friday morning. Despite the errors, staff at both the House Appropriations Committee and at ED refer interested parties to the December 19th tables because they are the most accurate to date, even if not completely accurate; but stay tuned because ED will soon revise them. We will alert you to updates as soon as they are ready.

Resources:
Committee on Appropriations, http://appropriations.house.gov/
“Budget News,” US Department of Education, http://www.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/news.html.
Author: DAD