President Bush Signs Competitiveness Bill into Law

On Thursday, August 9, President Bush signed H.R. 2272, the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science (America COMPETES) Act, despite concerns that the bill “leaves some of the key priorities unfulfilled and authorizes unnecessary and duplicative programs.” The bill marks the first major step in the President’s American Competitiveness Initiative, first introduced in his 2006 State of the Union. Despite a wide margin of bipartisan support, some Republicans in Congress greeted news of the president’s signing of the bill with skepticism and misgivings.

H.R. 2272 does the following:
• Authorizes spending $33 billion over the next three years to support 25,000 new math and science teachers through professional development and graduate education assistance;
• Authorizes grants to support baccalaureate degrees in math and science with concurrent teacher certification, and establishes a public-private partnership with the business community to identify high-needs fields;
• Reauthorizes the National Science Foundation at $22 billion from fiscal 2008 to 2010, spread over several grant programs intended to encourage more students to teach math and science, as well as grants for college and graduate student science research;
• Authorizes $2.7 billion for the National Institute of Standards and Technology from fiscal 2008 through 2010, including funding for the institute’s laboratories;
• Authorizes $372 million from fiscal 2008 through 2010 to establish the Technology Innovation Program, intended to help turn cutting-edge research into commercially viable products;
• Authorizes almost $17 billion for the Energy Department from fiscal 2008 through 2010; and
• Establishes a new cutting-edge energy research agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) criticized the bill for authorizing new programs without the necessary funds. Under the House Pay Go rules, any new funding must be offset, either through program cuts or raising taxes. Although Congress has authorized spending for these programs, actual spending levels are determined each year through the appropriations cycle, therefore it is not clear how much money these new programs will actually receive.
Despite some Republican objections, the President joined a bipartisan group of Congressmen, as well as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in applauding the steps H.R. 2272 takes in helping American stay competitive in the global market. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a cosponsor of the bill, noted that, “by increasing our investment in basic research and the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, America is addressing the serious competitiveness challenges that it faces in today’s global economy.”
Resources:
John McArdle, “Bush Will Sign Competitiveness Bill Despite Some Misgivings,” Congress Now, August 9, 2007.
“Bush Signs Measure to Promote Competitiveness,” CQ Today, August 9, 2007.
Author: SAS

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House Committee Passes Student Loan Bill

The House Education and Labor committee voted 30-16 on Wednesday to pass H.R. 2669, the College Cost Reduction Act. The bill will reduce federal subsidies to college loan lenders by $19 billion over five years and transfer $18 billion of the savings to financial aid programs geared toward making college more affordable to students. It would direct $750 million in savings to deficit reduction, as required by the Fiscal Year 2008 budget resolution’s reconciliation instructions. This is the latest in a series of actions regarding student loans and college affordability, though it remains unclear whether the bill signals more momentum for eventual reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which Congress just extended last week to run through October 1st.

The House Education and Labor committee voted 30-16 on Wednesday to pass H.R. 2669, the College Cost Reduction Act. The bill will reduce federal subsidies to college loan lenders by $19 billion over five years and transfer $18 billion of the savings to financial aid programs geared toward making college more affordable to students. It would direct $750 million in savings to deficit reduction, as required by the Fiscal Year 2008 budget resolution’s reconciliation instructions. This is the latest in a series of actions regarding student loans and college affordability, though it remains unclear whether the bill signals more momentum for eventual reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which Congress just extended last week to run through October 1st.
While the bill attempts to help students and graduates, the bill also aims to help students by enforcing changes on the very institutions they attend. The legislation requires significantly more reporting by colleges about their prices and their performance, including data on completion rates and faculty/student ratios. The bill also puts in place a series of steps institutions would have to go through if they increase tuition significantly, along with some provisions aimed at discouraging such increases. Universities have consistently opposed this provision, claiming that “price controls” always prove to be poor public policy.
Another opponent to the legislation, the student loan industry, claims that the new bill will almost immediately make higher education less affordable for middle and low class families. The proposed cuts to lender subsidies will be passed onto the families in the form of increased loan costs. Another possible consequence is that with loans being unprofitable for a majority of lenders, many private companies will simply leave the student lending field, lowering options and competition, which is usually a driving force behind lowering costs.
Although the bill obviously garnered some bipartisan support, Republicans argued that the bill, which spends $5 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500 over five years, shortchanges needy students. They proposed, somewhat uncharacteristically, to double the Democrats’ increase on Pell grants. The majority of the increased spending in the Democrats’ bill goes towards cutting student loan interest rates. Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), the ranking Republican on the committee, suggested that the Republican proposal is more in line with the Democrats’ stated aims of helping students than their own proposal, which focuses much of its attention on cutting loan payments for borrowers after they’ve left college, rather the helping current students pay of college. McKeon used the same argument when Congress passed H.R. 5, which cut student loan interest rates, earlier this session.
However, the biggest Republican opposition centered on the fact that the spending increases are set to come in the form of mandatory spending, rather than the traditional discretionary spending reserved for these types of programs. Republicans argue that Democrats are simply creating new entitlements that help college graduates, rather than shifting discretionary priorities to help current students.
Overall, the bill will:
• Increase the maximum Pell Grant to $5,200 by 2001-12 (at a cost of $5 billion).
• Cut the interest rate on federally subsidized student loans in half, to 3.4 percent, by 2012-13. (Total cost: $6 billion.)
• Institute a system of “income-based repayment” for borrowers, in which their student loan payments would be capped at a manageable percentage of their income and their debt canceled after 20 years of repayment.
• Raise the amount that working students can earn — through the “income protection allowance” — without reducing their financial aid awards.
• Lift the annual and aggregate limits on how much individual students can borrow from the federal loan programs, with the goal of reducing borrowers’ dependence on private (and typically more expensive) loans.
• Forgive up to $5,000 in loans, and otherwise easing the loan repayment burden, for students who enter public service fields and fulfill other national needs.
• Create a new grant program for students who are planning to be teachers.
• Create a new program ($500 million over five years) for institutions that serve large numbers of Hispanic, American Indian and other minority students. This new provision, added to the legislation very late in the game, just before committee members voted on it, would allow for the provision of funds to “predominantly black” institutions — those that meet a variety of standards, including having at least 40 percent of their enrolled students be black.
Resources:
Doug Lederman, “The Competition to Aid Students,” Inside Higher Ed, June 14, 2007.
Patti Mohr, “Panel Advances Student Loan Reforms,” Education Daily, June 15, 2007.
Author: SAS

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Immigration on Deck for the Senate

When Congress returns to work next week, the Senate will likely tie itself into a knot trying to deal with the new immigration bill that a select group of Senators introduced on May 9, S. 1348, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007.
The small coalition of Senators who patched this together will have a hard time defending it from its critics in both parties.

The Republican Party is imploding over provisions that would legalize the status of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the US. They are labeling it an “amnesty” bill. Many Democrats are incensed about the guest worker program that provides no direct path to permanent residence and that focuses on employment needs over family needs. There are also interest groups that all seem to have a moral gripe with one provision or another. The only thing holding the bill together is a political need to advance the issues, but the devil is in the details, and there are many details in this bill.
For example, of particular interest to the adult education community is the language training that an immigrant could receive on the pathway to citizenship. As he did in last year’s immigration debate, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) will likely offer an amendment that would allocate $500 for each "lawful immigrant" seeking citizenship to participate in English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) services. The $500 would come from the fees that each person would pay to gain citizenship and the funds could be used for ESOL programs provided by “accredited institutions of higher education or other qualified educational institutions (as determined by the chief).” This amendment, however, would likely create duplicative programs to ones already in the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) and it would provide insufficient funding for those duplicative programs.
The bill has drawn so many criticisms that over 100 amendments to the measure have already been filed, and aides expect many more to be filed at the beginning of next week. It is unclear how Senate majority leader Harry Reid (NV) will manage them, but it is clear that immigration is quickly becoming an issue that will define the parties as they head into the 2008 election season.
Resources:
Beth Crowley, “Long List of Amendments Clouds Procedural Picture for Immigration Bill,” CongressNow, May 31, 2007.
Author: DAD

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