Even if a House Budget Resolution is passed, Hill insiders tell NWA there is virtually no chance that a House-Senate Conference on the Budget can be successful at this late date. The statutory date for passage of the Budget Resolution is April 15, designed to provide enough time to provide adequate guidance on spending priorities for the Appropriations Committees. The Senate Budget Resolution includes an additional $16 billion in spending above the House funding level, a gap that cannot be quickly or easily breached.

As a result of this budget quagmire, Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis is moving ahead with the ten appropriations bills under his purview even without a budget, with several bills expected to be marked up in the next two weeks. A markup of the Labor-HHS bill is now scheduled for June 7th. House consideration of all Appropriations bills will be completed before Members leave for the July 4th recess.

Chairman Lewis will officially outline his funding allocations (called 302(b) allocations) tomorrow. Lewis plans to shift more than $7 billion from defense, foreign operations and veterans’ accounts to domestic spending. He will provide the Labor- HHS Appropriations Subcommittee with $4.1 billion more than the President requested. However, this allocation is essentially a freeze of FY 06 levels and $3 billion below the funding level in the Senate Budget Resolution for programs in the Senate Labor- HHS Subcommittee. It does not include funding for program increases requested by the Administration. It also does not accommodate any funding for earmarks in the bill, which are expected to be included in the bill this year, but were eliminated last year. Earmarks added an additional billion dollars to the Labor-HHS bill two years ago.

Action on the Labor-HHS bill this year will once again revolve solely among Republicans. Appropriators tell NWA that Democrats are likely to oppose the bill, arguing that it will sorely under fund a variety of programs. Appropriators are examining any areas in the bill for potential funding cuts. One of the programs under the Labor-HHS Appropriators microscope will be WIA, as the Administration continued to argue that several hundred million dollars can be cut from WIA without effecting services due to carryover in the formula programs.

While it is helpful that our Porter/Tierney Dear Colleague in support of WIA received 107 signatures, it will be incumbent upon us to demonstrate to Members of Congress, particularly Republican House Labor-HHS Appropriators and other vulnerable Republicans, that any funding cut to WIA will mean a real cut in services to jobseekers and employers.

To this end, we have coordinated the other organizations that represent the local workforce system and asked them to join in this effort to stop the proposed cuts to WIA.

While it is helpful that Chairman Lewis has helped bridge a portion of the gap in funding between the overall funding levels in the House and Senate Labor- HHS bills, the House bill is likely to once again be the low point in funding for WIA this year. The Senate bill will have more overall funding available, which will eventually lead to a contentious House-Senate Labor- HHS Conference Committee, likely to be held after the November elections.

We are putting together quite a line-up! The whole event kicks off with a Pre-Conference co-sponsored by USAWorks. NWA CEO David Bradley will be leading a full day workshop on the outcome of the Mid-Term Congressional Elections! This is a great opportunity to collaborate with leading Directors from all over the country as a precursor to the Conference which opens on Sunday December 3.

Visit our website at: ww w.nwaonline.org to obtain more information on our conference as well as a registration form.