On Friday, June 15, the House Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education reported out their bill for FY 2019. The full bill won’t be released until it is considered next week in the full Committee but some items were made public. Overall the Subcommittee is spending the same amount for FY 2019 that was spent and approved (in March of this year) for FY 2018. Child Care funding remains the same at $5.2 billion as the March boost and Head Start gets a small $50 million increase to $9.9 billion. Overall the National Institutes of Health gets the biggest increase at $1.25 billion more and the House once again makes a run at eliminating funding for Family Planning. It is unclear what the Subcommittee has decided as far as some of the smaller child welfare programs such as Promoting Safe and Stable Families, the Adoption-Kinship Incentives Fund and the prevention funds of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA).

Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, Congresswoman Rosa Delauro expressed her disappointment at the funding decisions. She said that with discretionary spending receiving another increase in FY 2019, although less than the 2018 increase, it should still mean that an increase based on the overall FY ’19 budget means that the Labor-HHS-Education allocation should be $5 billion more not frozen as is the case in the House version.

The Senate Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee will take up its bill the week of June 25. There is a $2 billion difference in funding for Labor-HHS-Education compared to what the House has allocated. CWLA testimony to the Senate testimony here.