Education Department officials are nearing the end of negotiations with the Office of Management and Budget on their fiscal 1989 spending plan, which will request more than $20 billion, according to Bruce Carnes, deputy undersecretary for planning, budget, and evaluation.
The total figure will be “closer to $21 billion,” he said, “and when the ink dries, it could be more than that.”
A request at that level would re4present almost a $1-billion increase over the fiscal 1987 allocations recently signed into law, and would be the largest education-spending proposal of the Reagan Administration.
It would be only the second time an Administration education budget plan exceeded the Congress’s prior appropriation. The first was in 1984, when former Secretary of Education Terrel H. Bell unveiled a $15.5-billion request for fiscal 1985, up $100 million from 1984 levels.
