Trump Threatens to Cut Off Funding if Schools Don’t Reopen

By Yuval Rosenberg

Trump Threatens to Cut Off Federal Funding to Schools That
Don’t Reopen in the Fall

President Trump threatened to cut off federal funding for
schools that don’t restart in-person classes by the fall and
assailed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for
reopening schools, calling them “very tough,” “expensive” and “very
impractical.”

"The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S.
schools open before the November Election, but is important for the
children & families. May cut off funding if not open!" Trump

tweeted Wednesday morning.

New guidance coming: Shortly after, Vice President Mike
Pence told reporters at a briefing of the White House coronavirus
task force that the CDC would issue additional guidance next week.
“The president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be
too tough,” Pence said.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the CDC director, reminded reporters at the
briefing that the health agency’s recommendations are “guidance,
not requirements” and emphasized that the guidelines are not
intended “to be used as a rationale to keep schools closed.”

An administration push to reopen: The president and
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have ramped up a push this week to
get children back in classrooms this fall, a crucial step toward a
more full-fledged economic recovery since it would better enable
working parents to return to their jobs. Trump’s reelection
prospects may well depend on the state of the pandemic and economy
as voters cast their ballots.

Trump said Tuesday he would “put pressure on governors and
everybody else” to reopen schools, and DeVos told Fox News host
Tucker Carlson Tuesday night that she is “very seriously” looking
at withholding federal funds from schools that don't open their
classrooms.

Administration officials emphasized Wednesday that keeping
schools closed carries risks as well and could result in students
falling behind academically or suffering health and nutritional
effects. The White House notes that the American Academy of
Pediatrics
has said it “strongly advocates that all policy
considerations for the coming year should start with a goal of
having students physically present in school.”

Setting up clashes: Trump’s latest push will set the
stage for clashes with Democrats, some of whom have already
criticized the administration’s approach as well as with teachers’
unions and state and local officials. A spokesperson for House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told
Bloomberg News that Trump has repeatedly ignored
medical experts and needs to “get serious about crushing the virus
instead of asking parents, teachers and children to risk their
lives.”

Teachers unions say that while they want to get kids back to
their classrooms, reopening must happen safely. They’ve also pushed
for
more than $100 billion in additional funding to
that end.

“Trump and DeVos woke up yesterday about the importance of
public schooling. They demanded schools reopen but they didn’t
offer any plans or resources to support to schools. They didn’t
offer any guidance on keeping kids safe,” Randi Weingarten,
president of American Federation of Teachers,
tweeted Tuesday night. She later added: “Reopening
schools doesn’t happen with an all-caps tweet or WH photo op. It
happens w/ careful planning to meets students’ needs, methodical
attention to preventing virus spread in schools, & sufficient
federal resources to help us get there.”

Could Trump really cut school funding? The federal
government provides billions of dollars for low-income schools and
special education at the K-12 level, but that represents only a
small portion of overall education spending, with the vast majority
of school funding — about 90% — coming from state and local
budgets.

Trump’s threat to block federal funding may not have much bite.
“Trump can't unilaterally cut current federal funding for
schools,”
CNN explains. “However, he could possibly restrict
some recent pandemic relief funding -- which would likely be
challenged in court -- and refuse to sign future legislation for
federal grants and bailouts for schools.”

Evan Hollander, spokesperson for the Democratic-controlled House
Appropriations Committee, said in a statement cited by
Politico that the president doesn't have the
authority to withhold federal funds.

"President Trump is repeating the same mistakes that have made
America’s coronavirus pandemic the worst in the world, attempting
to override science in search of political advantage," Hollander
said. "When it comes to our schools, Congress funds federal
education programs that serve some of the most vulnerable young
people in our country. The President has no authority to cut off
funding for these students, and threatening to do so to prop up his
flailing campaign is offensive."

Still, The New York Times
reports that Trump’s funding threat “carries real
weight” because the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package passed
by Congress in March gave DeVos wide latitude in deciding how to
distribute tens of millions of dollars in aid to school
districts.

“Those districts are now desperate for funds as they try to find
ways to open classrooms with far fewer students and staff in each,
to maintain social distancing, to test students and staff for the
coronavirus, and to provide masks and other protective gear,” the
Times reports. “Education groups have estimated that they need at
least $200 billion in additional funding to reopen next school
year.” DeVos, meanwhile, reportedly said Tuesday that only 1% of
the $13.5 billion in relief funding for K-12 school districts had
been claimed.

DeVos and Pence both acknowledged that federal money
represents a fraction of overall education spending and said the
administration would look for other ways to encourage states to
return students to classrooms. “As we work with Congress on the
next round of state support, we're going to be looking for ways to
give states a strong incentive and encouragement to get kids back
to school,” Pence told reporters Wednesday.

House Dems Look to Boost Spending by $250 Billion

House Democrats are looking to increase federal spending by
about $250 billion next year — a boost that would exceed budget
levels agreed to in a bipartisan deal reached last year with
Republicans and the Trump administration.

The Democratic spending bills introduced by House appropriators
this week would bring discretionary spending to more than $1.6
trillion, a 16% increase over current levels, The Hill’s Niv Elis

reports.

Democrats say the pandemic has raised the need for additional
funding, which Elis says would cover areas ranging from rural
broadband and transportation infrastructure to health care and
global coronavirus relief. Republicans counter that the Democratic
proposal will make it harder to reach agreement with the Senate on
2021 spending levels.

“In any other year, a quarter-trillion dollars tacked onto a
series of regular spending bills would be unheard of,” Elis writes.
“But the economic emergency caused by the pandemic has turned it
into a rounding error, as Congress has approved trillions of
dollars to fight COVID-19, including a record $2.2 trillion for the
CARES Act in March. … Even budget hawks have acknowledged that
deficit spending is needed in times like these, with austerity
reserved for boom times.”

Still, Marc Goldwein, head of policy for the Committee for a
Responsible Federal Budget, warned that the pandemic shouldn’t be
used as an excuse for non-emergency spending. “The emergency
designation is there for emergencies, which means things that are
urgent, unforeseen and temporary,” Goldwein told The Hill. “The
question that I would ask is if the broadband, the housing, is that
really in light of the coronavirus emergency? It’s not appropriate
to use an emergency situation for building roads.”

The bottom line: The Democratic
proposal may raise the chances that the annual appropriations
process gets bogged down in partisan fights. “Any long-term
standoff between congressional Democrats and Republicans would just
increase the odds of Congress kicking the can down the road with a
continuing resolution, dealing with spending legislation after the
November elections, perhaps even into January,” Elis
writes.

House Subcommittee Approves $695 Billion Defense Spending
Bill

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense on Wednesday
approved
$694.6 billion in spending authority for the
Department of Defense in fiscal year 2021, providing an increase of
$1.3 billion above this year’s spending level, which is still $3.7
billion below what President Trump requested in his budget. The
bill would also provide a 3% pay raise for servicemembers. It next
goes to the full Appropriations Committee for markup.

CQ defense reporter John M. Donnelly writes that congressional
appropriators have once again found creative ways to shift around
billions of dollars and provide money for programs that were not in
the president’s budget. “And — this is the hard part — they paid
for it all by dredging up at least $5 billion from obscure sources
that virtually no one but they knew about, and few will ever be
able to explain,” he says.

“This year, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee’s
nearly $695 billion bill … manages to bankroll billions in
lawmakers' priorities that the president did not request in his
budget, while at the same time subtracting relatively few things
that were requested.
“And yet, as if by magic, the total amount of money in the
House bill still comes in about $3.7 billion less than the
president’s plan.
“When Senate appropriators weigh in soon with their own
companion Defense spending bill, it too will reflect the same
legerdemain, snatching billions of dollars seemingly out of thin
air.”

The House’s Defense bill includes $1 billion for what Donnelly
describes as “a special fund that the National Guard later taps to
pay for still-to-be-determined equipment”; $4.1 billion more than
requested in the president’s budget for military hardware,
including $2.4 billion for new warships; and money for medical
research — “$513 million for cancer research and $175 million for
psychological and brain-injury research” that wasn’t requested by
the Pentagon and which critics say shouldn’t be part of the Defense
budget.


Read more of Donnelly’s analysis at Roll
Call.

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