No substantive legislative activity affecting the workforce system is ongoing during the pre-election recess, as Members’ focus remains on the campaign trail. Upon returning to Washington on November 13th, Members are faced with the daunting prospect of trying to complete nine appropriations bills and a last minute flurry of remaining bills. Congress will be in session for one week in November and Members at this point expect to return to return to Washington on December 4th. The leadership in both the House and Senate now indicate that they expect to be in session through mid-December.

However, the election results could change these plans. If Democrats capture at least one chamber in Tuesday’s elections, both parties may choose to return the week of November 13th and pass a long term Continuing Resolution until some time in the new year, as Democrats may want to revisit the appropriations bills in the majority and if Republicans are returning to Washington after a difficult election cycle, they may not have the desire to work through contentious appropriations bills during a lame duck session. A determination of how long to extend the lame duck session will need to be made soon after Members return, as Congress will need to pass the next Continuing Resolution to receive President Bush’s signature before he leaves for a trip to Asia on November 15.

Whenever the appropriations bills are ultimately taken up, insiders tell us that they are very concerned that the bills will be vastly under funded. The remaining nine bills, including Labor-HHS, will need to be reduced by a total of $5 billion to absorb a last minute funding increase to the DOD appropriations conference bill. As the Labor-HHS bill is the largest remaining appropriations bill, it is expected to receive the largest overall cut.

Despite the encouraging public statements this week by Congressman Mike Castle, who is leading the House moderates effort to add $3 billion to the Labor- HHS funding allocation and the efforts of Senators Arlen Specter and Tom Harkin who sent a Dear Colleague letter to the leadership in support of additional funding for the Labor-HHS funding allocation with fifty-seven Senators signatures, there is little expectation in either chamber that the Republican leadership will be able to provide additional funding for the Labor-HHS bill as promised to moderates in the budget debate. Appropriators expect that their allocation will be at the House levels at best (which is $1 billion below the Senate level and $3 billion below the level promised by the leadership), with the potential for even less funding than the House bill provided. The leadership will not provide Appropriators with a funding allocation for its remaining bills until after the election.

Our efforts during the recess have been focused on two areas - gathering opposition to the House WIA rescission and fixing a modification made to a provision we inserted in previous years preventing states from redesignating local areas or allowing changes by DOL to the definition of administrative costs until WIA reauthorized. The language this year has a proviso allowing changes to be made “after April 1, 2007 or whenever WIA reauthorized, whichever comes first”, which could devastate the local system. We are actively engaged in eliminating the April 1 date from this provision.

The lack of available funding makes the Appropriators’ task particularly difficult this year. Appropriators face with making significant cuts, regardless of their potential programmatic impact, to complete their bills, which makes a long term Continuing Resolution perhaps the best outcome for the workforce system. In the past, we have been successful in preventing large funding cuts WIA to the workforce system, in spite of the Administration’s claim of large WIA formula carryover. This year, the rescission and any many other programmatic funding cuts are potentially on the Appropriators’ chopping block, we are trying to limit the damage to WIA in this process by educating key authorizing and appropriations staff from both the House and Senate about the potential impact of a WIA rescission in the Labor-HHS Conference.

Our efforts to protect the workforce system are ongoing and at the highest levels. We have also informed the other groups representing the workforce system about the difficult funding environment this year, requesting their assistance in our effort by contacting their Members of Congress, highlighting the impact of the rescission locally and asking their Members of Congress to contact Labor-HHS appropriators and urge a rejection of the House WIA rescission in Conference.

Despite these collective efforts, appropriations staff supportive of the workforce system WIA tell us that it appears likely that some form of rescission may be included in the Labor-HHS bill if it is moved during the lame duck session, due the tremendous funding shortfall appropriators expect to face in their bill this year.

However, there is reason for optimism early next year, as key Committee staff in both chambers told us in the past two weeks that both Chairman Enzi and McKeon would both like to get this bill done early next year before moving on to the most pressing reauthorization bill, No Child Left Behind.

The bill could also be completed quickly next year if Democrats take control of the House, as the major sticking point in the bill, the faith based issue, will be off the table in the House and has never been included in any version of the Senate reauthorization bills. Democrats have told us that they will be supportive of the local system and will focus their reauthorization efforts on making system improvements. However, it remains to be seen under this scenario, whether a bill without a faith based component would either have a hold placed on it by a Senate conservative or face a veto threat from the Administration.