The administration has already sent their reply to the letter. In the recently passed bill to aid Teachers and Public Safety personel, they included a clause that requirest Texas to maintain education spending at current levels through 2013 in order to quailfy for the $800M in aid. Of course the reason for the bill in the first place is that education spending is decreasing sharply which will cause teacher layoffs, of which the aid is designed to prevent. This is kinda like a reverse ear mark where a state is specifically excluded. It will be interesting to see the response by Texas to this move by the administration.