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SENATE, HOUSE PREPARE TO VOTE ON EDUCATION APPROPRIATIONS BILLSMay 22, 2000WASHINGTON -- The House and Senate are both expected to vote this week on education appropriations bills, bringing to a head efforts to move federal funding closer to the federal special ed law's original promise of 40 percent of the states' cost of educating children with disabilities. In passing the bills earlier this month, neither the Senate Appropriations Committee nor its House counterpart adhered to the combined House-Senate budget resolution passed earlier this year to increase Individuals with Disabilities Education Act state grants by $2 billion. However, both appropriations bills include large increases over the fiscal 2000 allocation. Last fall, Congress earmarked about $5 billion of the total $6 billion IDEA budget to go directly to the states for fiscal 2000. The bills passed by the House and Senate committees May 10 and 11, respectively, contain about 25 percent more money for the states. The Senate committee approved $6.28 billion for the Part B state grants, while the House committee approved $6.25 billion. Though they do not eliminate the shortfall from the law's 40 percent funding promise, the Part B allocations are substantial increases from the $5.3 billion President Clinton requested in his 2001 budget, Republicans have been quick to point out. The Part B grants include funding for the state-administered Preschool Grants and the Infants and Toddlers Program as well. The House committee kept both appropriations levels even with the 2000 allocations of $390 million for preschools and $375 million for infants and toddlers. The Senate committee also level-funded the preschool grants but increased funding for the Infants and Toddlers Program to $383.6 million. The appropriations bills could be altered when the full House and full Senate consider them this week, making a further Part B increase still possible. In April, a House-Senate conference committee approved a budget resolution that included a $2 billion increase in IDEA Part B funding. That resolution was supposed to guide the appropriations committees, as well as the members of Congress, in their deliberations over the final figures to approve. In its original budget resolution, the Senate did not request any additional funding for Part B programs, but the conferees used the House's $2 billion figure in their resolution. The budget resolution could also have included a provision to increase Part B funds by $31 billion over the next five years, as offered by Sens. Jim Jeffords (R-Vt.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.). Instead, that amendment was replaced by a vague offering from Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) expressing the "sense of the Senate" that increasing funding for IDEA should be a priority. The "sense of the Senate" provision has no concrete bearing on the appropriations process. Despite losing the teeth of the Jeffords-Dodd amendment, the Republicans have made plenty of political hay from the budget resolution, which would bring federal Part B funding to 20 percent of the states' cost of educating students with disabilities, a major step up from the 12 percent level of recent years. Rep. Jim Nussle, of Iowa, is getting credit for working with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, and Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, of Ohio, to "find a way to build on last year's successes," the GOP said in a statement. Nussle notes the resolution contains a much larger IDEA state grant increase than the Clinton administration asked for.
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