The Labor – H.H.S. – Education Veto in Context
End Notes
[i] The House and Senate each passed similar versions of the bill, and a conference committee is expected to reach an agreement between the two chambers shortly.
[ii] Notes on data used in this analysis. All amounts in this analysis are for “discretionary,” or non-entitlement, programs funded by the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill for the coming year, fiscal year 2008. The figures for 2002 through 2006 exclude emergency funding, e.g., for Katrina relief in 2005 and 2006. The existing (2007) funding levels, adjusted for inflation, are from the Congressional Budget Office; they are “CBO’s 2007 March baseline.” Finally, our figures for the congressional funding levels for 2008 include almost $2 billion that is technically provided as an advance appropriation for 2009 but that goes to programs such as education grants, whose 12-month “program year” spans the end of fiscal year 2008 and the beginning of fiscal year 2009. In such programs, advance funding for 2009 or regular funding for 2008 are effectively equivalent, because they both would be used in the same “program year.” Accordingly, we treat the increase in advance 2009 funding as though it were an increase in 2008 funding.
[iii] The Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill for 2002 was enacted in the fall of 2001, when Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont had left the Republican party to become an independent, giving control of the Senate to the Democrats for one year (by a margin of 50-49-1).