On March 8, congressional leaders released the negotiated text of the long-overdue Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 appropriations omnibus package. In great news for CTE, the omnibus bill includes a $45 million increase for the Perkins Basic State Grant! While larger investments in CTE are still needed, this bill offers more than what the President requested and continues the steady increase in Perkins funding since 2017. Overall, the omnibus proposes $1.5 trillion in spending, including a 5.6% increase over FY 2021 in defense-related spending and a 6.7% increase for non-defense spending.
At this point, there are only three days before the current continuing resolution (CR), which extended current funding levels to give Congress more time to negotiate without shutting down the government, is set to expire. It is expected that the House will vote on the omnibus bill on March 9, which would give the Senate just two days to pass it. Because of the short timeline, the House also plans to pass another CR, through March 15, to buy the Senate a little more time to hold their final vote on the bill. We will have more information on other education and workforce funding levels in the bill over the next few days and will continue to post updates as Congress tries to finalize the process.
