GOP extols worker training, then slashes funding Republicans are prepared to bring up a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

In the great trade debate last month, the air was filled with promises to help American workers keep pace with a changing world. Days after, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved new Republican cuts from funding for adult education and worker training — programs the GOP had embraced just a year ago.

When the Senate returns Tuesday from its July Fourth recess, the same movie will be showing, only this time affecting public schools around the nation. With considerable pride, Republicans are prepared to bring up a long-delayed rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But here, too, the GOP’s appropriations plan cuts from the very same programs it says it wants to increase.


At one level, this is simple arithmetic. The strict spending caps under the Budget Control Act leave no room for growth in 2016. Education and worker training funds are being sacrificed to make room for other GOP priorities, whether to fill holes in the transportation budget or to make a splash with a big increase for biomedical research.

But the numbers also illustrate a larger conflict faced by centrist Republicans.

Going into the 2016 elections, these are often veteran lawmakers who see a golden opportunity to move past divisive social issues and focus on economic development and national security priorities. But time and again, the GOP keeps contradicting itself by failing to come to grips with the need for a budget deal to facilitate the investments it wants to make.

“It is a very important proof point. When we say we need to invest in our workforce, when we say we need to invest in education … we need to back it up with a budget that actually does that,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who has been a willing partner with Republicans on these issues. “Looking at an authorization bill and saying you support this — and then turning around and not funding what you need to do in terms of the investments — is a clear message in why we need a budget agreement that raises the caps to adequate spending levels.”

The differences are not small. Just three Republican senators opposed the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act when it sailed through Congress last summer. But the GOP’s appropriations bill in the Senate now cuts $330 million from the current 2015 funding for these same WIOA programs and is about $775 million below the authorized level for 2016.

Dislocated-worker funds are not spared even in the wake of the trade debate. And to put the numbers in some historical perspective, go back 10 years to when President George W. Bush was in the White House and Republicans controlled Congress.

Compared with fiscal 2006, total funding for employment and training services in the Labor Department would be 33 percent less under the new Senate Appropriations bill when measured in real inflation-adjusted dollars. Even when Congress is taken out of the equation, the real dollars are substantially below what Bush and then-Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, the wife of now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), thought were needed in their budget requests at the time.

Making the same sort of comparisons with the Senate’s new ESEA rewrite this week is more difficult because the bill is written in open-ended fashion to authorize “such sums as may be necessary.” But the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the giant 792-page measure — titled “Every Child Achieves” — would authorize spending of $23.9 billion in 2016.

By CBO’s count, that’s about $900 million above 2015 funding for the same set of activities. Yet here again, Republican-backed appropriations bills are moving in the opposite direction: cutting, not adding, hundreds of millions of dollars from 2015 levels.

Excluding Pell Grants, which serve low-income college students, discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education would be cut $1.36 billion below 2015 levels under the bill reported from Senate Appropriations. The comparable House spending bill cuts even more, $2.4 billion.

President Barack Obama’s education initiatives take the biggest beating. But it’s striking how many programs judged integral to the new ESEA bill are also being hit.

These include state grants to improve teacher quality, mathematics and science partnerships, and 21st Century Community Learning Centers. The Striving Readers program, an Obama initiative but one largely incorporated in the “Every Child Achieves” package, is wiped out entirely.

It’s like two sets of books, an age-old problem for Washington: how to square the political “narrative” of the day with less convenient facts.

But this time is different because of the personalities involved and the almost side-by-side appropriations and authorization debates, making this set of worker training and education issues stand out more in the Senate.

No less than Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), now chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, was ebullient when the WIOA training bill cleared Congress last summer. “This is a day of elation for me,” he told his colleagues on the Senate floor.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), an easygoing former businessman who has been instrumental in past talks with the White House, was among the chief sponsors with Murray of the worker bill. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who will manage the education measure this week, was a player in WIOA as well. And like Murray, Alexander is an important bridge now between the Senate Appropriations leadership and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which he chairs.

Shaun Donovan, the White House’s budget director, says Republicans are “talking the talk on the authorizing side” and “not walking the walk on the appropriating side.”

Yet as Obama’s point man, Donovan finds glimmers of hope in the debate. “As you see Republicans who want to get stuff done on a bipartisan basis working on the authorizing stuff, it’s only raising their level of frustration about sequestration and the need to do something,” Donovan said in an interview.

Perhaps so. But the old joke about Senate moderates is they are just that: moderate. Caution still reigns.

Asked to respond to Murray’s comments, Alexander ducked with a one-sentence, written statement: “Governing is about setting priorities, and I look forward to doing exactly that through the appropriations process this year,” he said.

Enzi insisted that he still cares about worker training but was also vague about the next step — or revisiting the GOP’s budget plan.

“Workforce training continues to me one of my top priorities, because it helps people gain the skills they need to improve their position in life, which takes pressure off of the federal government,” Enzi said in his own written statement. “If we want to increase spending on higher priority programs without busting the budget caps, Congress should reexamine what they are actually funding in order to improve or eliminate government programs not delivering results. Last year, according to CBO, Congress spent nearly $294 billion on programs whose authorization has expired. By taking a closer look at these programs and others, Congress would have more funding flexibility to boost important programs and priorities.”?

But time is running short. And July is a traditional, telltale point in the annual appropriations process.

The House has made significant progress, having approved six of the 12 annual bills to keep government agencies for the new fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Two more are pending, and of the remaining four, all but Agriculture’s budget are out of committee.

That said, Democrats remain disciplined in support of veto threats from Obama, who is demanding some compromise that would raise the BCA caps for both domestic and defense spending.

Even in the case of the Pentagon budget, where Republicans have reverted to an old budget gimmick to get around the same BCA caps, the 278-149 vote in the House on June 11 fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to override Obama. In the Senate, Democrats have taken the posture that they will block floor action entirely until there is some agreement to begin talks.

To probe for splits among the Democrats, McConnell departed from the traditional order last month and attempted to call up the defense appropriations bill only days after it had been reported by Senate Appropriations.

Democrats prevailed easily enough in a vote on June 18. But McConnell is poised to try again soon and clearly sees the “support the troops” argument as one way to counter Democratic accusations that the GOP is trigger-happy when it comes to closing the government.

Republicans would love to rid themselves of that label, which has hung around their necks ever since then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) played Oliver Cromwell and shut down the government in 1995. It has since cost the GOP precious leverage in any confrontation with the White House — not only in terms of spending priorities but also the legislative riders McConnell has promoted as a way to curb Obama’s power.

Indeed, McConnell has been more of a presence in the Appropriations Committee this year and will be pivotal to any chance of a deal. The administration can point to statements from House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his leadership that show a willingness to negotiate. But McConnell has appeared determined to exact more of a price first. Pounding Senate Democrats for not seeming to “support the troops” may suit his purpose.

Given the bloodshed in the Mideast, it is a politically potent argument. But as always with such “support the troops” appeals, there’s a level of hokum.

In 2007, Senate Republicans themselves blocked a war supplemental from ever getting to Bush because they opposed Iraq withdrawal language added by Democrats. Military planners now will argue that it is impossible to budget effectively based on the temporary contingency funds the GOP is offering. And when it comes to stalling appropriations bills, McConnell is the past master.

Trying to add a little red meat, the GOP has adopted the political line that Obama and his Democrats are really voting against the troops so they can have more money for the Environmental Protection Agency. That suits McConnell’s antipathy for the EPA and its climate change agenda, which threatens his allies in the coal industry. But it also sets the stage for what could be a bit of remarkable political theater in September when Pope Francis will visit Washington.

“Today, it is the case that some economic sectors exercise more power than states themselves,” Francis wrote in his recent encyclical letter “On Care for Our Common Home.” “The mindset that leaves no room for sincere concern for the environment is the same mindset which lacks concern for the most vulnerable members of society.”

The pope’s scheduled address to Congress is Sept 24. That’s just days before the new fiscal year begins and all these numbers and choices will seem more immediate and real.