The jobs programs in trouble, delicious corn-based recipes, and $1 billion in grants listings.
Plus, why NSF grants are bad bets right now.
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Hello
Greetings from D.C., where I greatly enjoyed seeing old friends and making new ones at an excellent Skills Summit by the National Skills Coalition.
Toplines
News you should know affecting money that gets people to work.
No one really has a clue what the White House is talking about in its budget.
As expected, President Trump’s“skinny budget” calls for a consolidation of federal workforce training programs. The new vehicle would be a merged grant called the “Make America Skilled Again,” or MASA grants. (Because of the Office of Management and Budget’s well-known love of tamales, obviously.)
Ten percent of those dollars would go toward apprenticeship—not Registered Apprenticeship, interestingly enough—and the White House says the the new program would “give States and localities the flexibility to spend workforce dollars to best support their workers and economies, instead of funneling taxpayer dollars to progressive non-profits finding work for illegal immigrants or focusing on DEI.”
Cool. As someone who spent two years tracking the workforce dollars of the Department of Labor, I’ll say the my-job-was-to-funnel-money-to-illegal-immigrants thing came as a surprise. (Behind the paywall, I share how an embarrassing misread might be behind this line.) Either way, it’s clear this White House is going after the woke workforce structures shepherded in previous Congresses by noted Cal-Berkeley firebrand [checks notes]… Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina.
The general consensus is that these nutritious MASA dollars would be block grants, or money where the federal government gives states a heap of cash and a general purpose and lets them figure out the details. Two issues:
If we’re stopping “DEI” projects—most of which the White House seems to think are in Minnesota, this budget document seems to think at times—a block grant wouldn’t prevent that. Theoretically, Minneapolis could route its money to as many woke, raspberry-bereted nonprofits as it wanted under a block grant. So while the White House seems ready to strike down the radical workforce requirements from Virginia “Che” Foxx’s communist manifesto, it can’t allow too much flexibility.
I haven’t seen or heard anyone who rightly knows what programs would be in this consolidation. The Administration calls for cutting $1.64 billion in programs, but it doesn’t specify from where. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, America’s main pot of workforce dollars, is separated into three main “formula” dollar programs—highly regulated cash divvied up by DOL and passed on for states to decide what to do with—and “discretionary” or “national” program dollars—grants awarded through various competitions. I reviewed the past few years’ appropriations and I don’t see any clear zeroing out of specific programs, but if anyone feels like they’ve decoded Russ Vought’s Workforce Riddle, email nick@jobsthat.work.
So what money is in play here? Which programs will live, which will programs will die, and which programs will never be the same again?
Behind the paywall, I start to make some predictions on a program-by-program basis after reviewing White House materials and program history.
The Women’s Bureau is pretty much over.
If you missed my breakdown yesterday of the Women’s Bureau program cuts, it’s here. The Administration killed Women’s Bureau grants on Wednesday without explanation yesterday beyond “DEIA." Much of the Bureau’s staff is gone.
This week’s grants listing number: $1 billion.
Two new federal opportunities, four new state opportunities, and a new private opportunity.
Behind the paywall:
I use a beautiful metaphor to explain why I wouldn’t apply to NSF grants.
New funding that seems doomed?
The apprenticeship and longtime workforce programs that I think are in trouble.