The looming workforce funding battle, $30 million in new DOL money, and $1.8 billion in grant listings.
Plus, $20 million more in missing DOL money and whatever happened to 'un-registered' Registered Apprenticeship for AI?
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Hello
Greetings from D.C., where my youngest daughter threw a celebratory “Roll Tide” at me the other night as I ran a bed-delaying errand for her. She then told her mother that I’m not allowed to say celebratory “Rolls Tide” anymore. Please respect my privacy at this time as I process this development.
I’ll have a special newsletter this afternoon on the new Executive Order on grantmaking. There’s a bit more there than I have seen written up thus far, and obviously it puts some of the missing money in a different light.
Meanwhile, DOL dropped a new $30 million grant that I didn’t have on the board on Wednesday. I break down the funding opportunity, where it came from, and my thoughts on how to position yourself for it in the Cheat Sheet behind the paywall.
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News you should know affecting money that gets people to work.
Countdown.
We’re 54 days from the end of the fiscal year. Nearly $275 million in workforce grant dollars haven’t been announced or opened to competition yet. All these dollars appear to expire on September 30.
Also: the blitz is on. There is more than $100 million in Homeland Security cash that hit the street last Friday. Applications are due next Friday.
The budget battle ahead.
The Senate has left town after appropriators passed along a bill that would re-up the federal workforce system as it is and restore it to funding levels from 2024. The House fled town a couple weeks ago over an Epstein vote but indicated a workforce and education bill probably won’t clear with the President’s proposed cuts. Both chambers are gone until September, meaning the answers to the big questions on federal workforce funding—will there be more cuts? are workforce block grants dead? how will Easterseals further bedevil the Office of Management and Budget?—aren’t getting answered for a few weeks longer.
Don’t get comfortable. OMB, bedeviled as it may be by the charities for old folks and kids with disabilities, is actively trying to roll back any non-cuts by talking to the people in the House who most like cuts. As a reminder, OMB has called for eliminating most workforce funding and replacing it with block grants that are 25 percent smaller than money paid out to states via formula each year. Its leadership seems especially insistent on its cuts, saying he wants make the appropriations process more partisan because that doesn’t involve talking to Democrats who wear blue and stuff.
From Politico:
Adding to the bedlam on Capitol Hill ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown cliff, White House budget director Russ Vought is vocalizing plans to sabotage the bipartisan funding negotiations he openly scorns. His tool of choice could be to send more [rescission] requests to claw back funding lawmakers previously enacted after reaching cross-party compromise.
I’m not sure about Russ Vought’s new “paradigm” where Congress approves government funding without bipartisan support. Or as Senate Majority Leader John Thune put it in the story linked in the above quote: math continues to exist in the Senate. On workforce, I don’t think the Administration has the numbers in the House by recent indications, but this House is often persuaded to find their way to supporting everything the President wants.
Separately, even in this environment, I’m struggling to see a rescissions package succeeding if it includes workforce and education funding that, say, has a quarter of the Senate behind it. And at some point we’re in an election where Republicans will try to retain both chambers, which makes it a little harder to pursue the White House’s threat to primary every Republican who doesn’t follow its precise instructions.
Yes, one of those packages just got through Congress, but workforce and education are different and can be an enthusiastic point of collaboration by Republicans and Democrats. Also, those dollars don’t involve the dangerous Marxist horns of the All Things Considered intro or The Great Red Threat known only as “Elmo.”
OMB was made aware of its limitations on Education just days ago. From The Atlantic:
[T]he four-week [Department of Education] funding freeze—and the backlash it sparked—showed that cutting popular programs for schoolkids can be as unwelcome in Trump country as it is in coastal cities.
“After months of being told to ‘wait it out,’ districts are now supposed to pick up the pieces and act like everything’s fine,” Steven Johnson, the superintendent of Fort Ransom School District, in southeastern North Dakota, told me. “I’ve got to be honest—this doesn’t sit well out here. You can’t freeze money that was already allocated, leave schools hanging through hiring season and budget planning, and then expect us to just be grateful when it finally shows up. Rural folks don’t like being jerked around.” . . .
The closest thing to an explanation came from the Office of Management and Budget, which asserted in a statement that the funds had previously been used to “subsidize a radical left-wing agenda,” support LGBTQ programming, and “promote illegal immigrant advocacy.”
I don’t mean to make education and workforce programs seem more important than they are to cut-hungry Republican leaders. I’m also trying not to read too much into last week’s Senate Appropriation’s vote because it ultimately could amount providing shelter for assorted lawmaking asses following deep cuts six weeks into the future, i.e. “THE WHITE HOUSE MADE US DO IT” theory.
Still, I have seen enough to gather that there seems to be a bit of cut exhaustion in Congress, and education and workforce tend to have a fair amount of bipartisan support—something I think it’s fair to say that the OMB crew has not fully absorbed. Members seem skeptical of the rationales behind proposed cuts to workforce—not too dissimilar to the Education freeze—which frequently come back to alleged “woke” and “I said ‘woke’ why aren’t you cutting it yet?”
This week’s grants listings number: $1.8 billion.
A beefy update with a bunch of new federal grant dollars including one of those DHS quick-hitters, some new workforce-adjacent funds, and a quick-turn private grant in Michigan. Plus, I added a couple new state rolling grants.
Behind the paywall.
About that $30 million in new DOL money and how to think about applying for it.
The other missing DOL money.
About unregistered Registered Apprenticeship for AI.