Obey: Compromise or Else

On Tuesday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies hosted a hearing on the President’s fiscal year 2009 (FY09) proposed budget for the U.S. Department of Education (ED). Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) brought Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings before the Committee, and, like the previous two years, the event was not pleasant for the Secretary.

Secretary Spellings defended the President’s flat funding for ED by stating, “we have limited resources” and the federal responsibility is to “ensure that taxpayer dollars are allocated in the most effective and efficient ways.” This meant cutting many “small or ineffective” programs while funding those programs the Administration believes are most effective. The President is requesting $59.2 billion in discretionary appropriations for ED, the same amount that Congress appropriated in 2008 and that does not account for inflation. The request proposes to eliminate or consolidate 47 ED programs, including zero funding for Career and Technical Education State Grants, Tech Prep Education State Grants, Even Start, Education Technology State Grants, and State Grants for Innovative Programs.

Members of the House Committee on Appropriations did not agree with the Administration’s request. Representative Barbara Lee (D - CA) and Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) spent considerable time asking about many of the programs that were cut from the budget, noting that many of them affected students who were poor and minorities. Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL) made the point that the underfunding of Career and Technical Education has been a regrettable theme of this Administration, a point supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, including Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH), Mike Simpson (R-ID), John Peterson (R-PA) and Tom Udall (D-NM).

Chairman Obey was less diplomatic and in no mood to negotiate over the proposed budget. He told Spellings to tell the President that either he negotiate with Congress to increase funding or Congress will wait until 2009, when he is out of the office, to resolve the matter. “I am not about to waste eight months of this Committee’s time,” Obey told Spellings, clearly still upset over last year’s budget standoff with the President. The question is whether the President “will act like an adult,” fumed Obey.

Resources:
http://appropriations.house.gov/Subcommittees/sub_lhhse.shtml
“U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings Testifies Before House Appropriations Subcommittee,” United States Department of Education, Press Room, February 26, 2008, http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2008/02/02262008.html
Author: DAD