In The Politics of Autism, I discuss federal spending for people with autism and other disabilities.
[There] is no proposed cut to special education grants to states, and a spokesman for Pocan acknowledged that the congressman misspoke. One of the Education Department's proposed budget tables—which is in billions, not millions—shows about $840 million moving from a $3 billion allocation in fiscal year 2019 to the budget that is currently under debate, for fiscal year 2020. It looks like a cut from $3 billion to $2.2 billion, but it's just a shift of when the dollars are going to be allocated.At Roll Call, Niels Lesniewski reports that DeVos's proposal to zero out Special Olympics funding is dead on arrival.
The leader of the official U.S. delegation to the 2019 Special Olympics World Summer Games, which wrapped up last week in Abu Dhabi, was none other than Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt.
Blunt is the chairman of the Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee of Appropriations, which has jurisdiction over the Education Department budget and is set to hear testimony from DeVos on Thursday morning.
“I’m a longtime supporter of Special Olympics and proud that Missouri is home to the largest Special Olympics training facility in the world. I was just at the World Games and saw, as I have many times before, what a huge impact the organization has on athletes, their families, and their communities,” Blunt said in a statement. “Our Department of Education appropriations bill will not cut funding for the program.”
