The Senate just released their FY 18 302(b) funding allocations. The Labor-HHS Subcommittee received $164.06 billion, a $3 billion(1.8%) increase from fiscal 2017 enacted levels and $8 billion (5%) above the House FY 18 funding level.

The Senate has more funding for Labor-HHS than in the House as Senate Appropriators are working off FY 17 levels for their total top line number, which is roughly $5 billion above the House’s top line number.  The Senate Labor-H Subcommittee also received a slightly larger allocation than they received last year.

Also, a bit of good news, late last night during the House Labor-HHS markup, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) offered an amendment to restore ETA funding to FY 17 levels. In response to this amendment, Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) indicated that the reductions to ETA programs were due to the overall allocation being lower than last year, rather than a lack of support for workforce programs. He highlighted how the Subcommittee funded ETA programs at levels well above what the Administration requested and he would like to work with his Democratic colleagues to restore some of these cuts when there is a larger budget agreement in place with more funding available.

Chairman Cole’s desire to reduce these cuts to workforce programs in combination with the just announced higher allocation in the Senate Labor-H bill sets up well for restoring the cut to SCSEP and other ETA programming.