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News and updates

CR and Syria

Congress will return to the US Capitol on Monday after a long August recess period. And in the nine working days they have scheduled for September, the focus will be on the instability in Syria and on-going fiscal issues.

The House is likely to take up a short-term, stopgap funding measure – continuing resolution (CR) – next week that will fund federal government beyond into the new fiscal year beginning on October 1st. This action is necessary to avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month as Congress has been unable to come to any agreement on FY14 budget and appropriations bills. Action on a CR will delay fiscal fights until Congress decides whether to grant President Obama authority to launch a military strike against Syria.

The CR is expected to contain few, if any, controversial riders and is not expected to last more than two to three months. It’s likely to continue discretionary spending into FY14 at the current rate of roughly $988 billion – or level funding. Both parties are looking at the CR and delay in FY14 appropriations as a negotiating tool to force action to modify the sequester and increase the nation’s borrowing limit by mid-October.

WA Member Bills

Below are a couple of recently introduced bills by our own Washington congressional delegation that we are tracking. More information about these bills can be found at thomas.loc.gov

HR 2105 – Information Technology Exchange Program Act of 2013
Sponsor: Congressman Derek Kilmer (D-WA)
Introduced: 5/22/2013
Current Status: Referred to House Committee on Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats, and Capabilities.
Summary: The bill aims to continue a program that allows employees from the private sector or academia to temporarily work for the Department of Defense (DOD) and DOD employees to work in the private sector. This will help DOD to modernize and protect and our nation’s information technology infrastructure and will help benefit private industry and academic institutions when developing tools and products to make lasting and significant contributions to the national defense.
Kilmer Press Release

HR 2944 – TIGER CUBS Act
Sponsor: Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA)
Introduced: 8/1/2013
Current Status: Referred to House Committees on Appropriations and the Budget
Summary: With the full name of the bill, The Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery for Cities Underfunded Because of Size Act of 2013, this bill would set aside 20 percent of special transportation infrastructure funding (TIGER funds) for smaller cities.
Larsen Press Release

Obama’s Plan for College Affordability

Last Thursday and Friday, President Obama toured several colleges and universities touting a new plan for higher education access and affordability. The Offices of Planning & Budgeting and Federal Relations prepared a brief with additional information about this plan.

Newly Introduced Veterans Education Bills

Below are a couple of recently introduced bills concerning Veterans’ education and benefits that we have been keeping our eye on:

HR 2749 – The VET Act
Sponsor: Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA)
Introduced: 7/19/2013
Current Status: Referred to House Committee on Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity
Summary: The legislation would give colleges the ability to see each student-veteran’s amount of GI Bill or other educational benefits through eBenefits; Facilitate college planning, so veterans’ counselors or academic counselors could help veterans register for classes to complete their degree in the time covered by their allocated educational benefit; Allow veterans to opt out of sharing their educational benefit information with their college; Enact strict privacy protections for veterans so that their educational benefit information could only be used for education counseling purposes by the educational institution where the veteran is enrolled.

Larsen Press Release

S 1042 – Veterans Legal Support Act of 2013
Sponsor: Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Introduced: 5/23/2013
Current Status: Hearings held within the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs
Summary: The legislation intends to decrease Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) backlog by increasing cooperation between the Department of Veterans Affairs and veterans legal clinics, and will maximize the effectiveness of the law school programs and encourage their continued development.

Shaheen Press Release

White House Releases Higher Education Proposals

As part of the college road show President Obama is undertaking starting today, the White House has released a fact sheet on a series of proposals that the Administration will be promoting on higher education. Some of these proposals require legislative action by Congress, while some can be instituted by the Administration. Other proposals by the Administration urge colleges to take action. The set of proposals focuses on three main areas:

Using Outcome Measures to Guide Student Aid Awards and Funding to Colleges

This area encompasses several proposals, most of which are built off of expanding the Administration’s reporting under their college scorecard:

  • Expands the current college scorecard by the 2015 school year to include things like the percentage of student receiving Pell Grants, average tuition, loan debt of students, graduation and transfer rates and earnings of graduates. The fact sheet implies the Department of Education can take these steps unilaterally but the collection of some data by the Department such as graduate earnings could be problematic given current restrictions on student level data collection in the Higher Education Act. 
  • Seeks, by 2018, to tie the rating system to student aid awards by providing students attending high performing colleges with larger Pell Grants and “more affordable student loans.” The 2018 element of this proposal would require legislative action by Congress.
  • Reiterates the call for the Administration’s College Race to the Top proposal, first made as part of their 2014 budget, and calls for bonuses to be paid to colleges based on the number of Pell recipients they enroll. This would require legislative changes.
  • Requires students to complete a certain percentage of classes before receiving their full student aid (Pell Grants and loans) allocation – there is not a great amount of detail on this, but it seems to imply that Pell Grants and loans may be available for schools to draw down in some sort of installments based on completion of classes by students. This would require legislative action by Congress.

Challenging Colleges to Further Innovate

This area largely seems focused on encouraging colleges and others to do what some are already doing by calling for a greater focus on competency-based education, expansion of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), expanding e-advising and other student services and encouraging dual enrollment. The Administration reiterates its support for its First in the World proposal (from its last few budgets) and the last installment of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College funding. The Administration also focuses on the experimental sites authority saying they will encourage “high-quality, low-cost innovations” including offering Pell Grants to high school students taking college courses and credit for prior learning. Other than seeking funding for the First in the World initiative, none of this would seem to require legislative action by Congress and some of it is just calling on actions by schools and others.

Addressing Student Debt

The Administration reiterates its proposal to expand Income-Based Repayment (IBR) to all students (regardless of when they might have first borrowed) to cap loan payments for borrowers under the program to 10 percent of their monthly income. This proposal was also made by the Administration as part of their solution to the recently enacted student loan interest rate issues. The Department of Education will also take on an outreach effort to educate borrowers about IBR. The expansion of IBR would require legislative changes.

Sources: White House, Penn Hill Group