Did House Republicans Overreach on Education Cuts?

House Republicans have spent all year gearing up for big cuts to education spending. And then yesterday they blinked.

In a last-minute move, a House Appropriations subcommittee delayed a draft fiscal year 2014 funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education. The subcommittee also delayed a scheduled vote on that bill. According to the subcommittee chair Jack Kingston (R-GA), this is all due to a scheduling problem. The Hill reports that the deep cuts in the bill may have been more than Republicans could stomach.

We’ve been warning Congress about this matter since April and aren’t surprised there is now a backlash.

Spending limits in the Budget Control Act of 2011, which are $18 billion below the current year post-sequester funding levels, combined with House Republican’s support for restoring funding at the Department of Defense to its pre-sequestration level, by default force lawmakers to make big cuts to domestic programs. Sure enough, the House Appropriations committee announced in May that it planned to move a 2014 funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services (HHS), and Education that would cut those agencies back to their 2001 levels.

The decision yesterday by House Republicans to postpone further action on the funding bill will certainly give lawmakers more time to wrangle over the details of which programs should absorb cuts and which should be spared. But more time isn’t going to help. Chopping key domestic agencies back to 2001 funding levels is a politically impossible task.

We bet the bill never sees the light of day, let alone the House floor.