Legislation and Guidance
- Appropriations is Top Priority this Spring
- NCLB Still Alive in the Senate
- HEA Faces Tough Conference
- WIA Remains On the Backburner
- Farm Bill Deadline Looming
Legislation and Guidance
Appropriations is Top Priority this Spring
Congress is set to begin work on fiscal year 2009 (FY09) appropriations as soon as it returns to Washington next week. Both the Appropriations and Budget committees are preparing to flesh out their proposals for the next fiscal year's funding levels. A number of the Administration's Cabinet Members have already testified before Congress regarding White House budget proposals, and House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) is planning another hearing for next Tuesday.
Representative Obey, also the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education, is having Secretary Margaret Spellings testify before his subcommittee regarding the President's budget requests for education. One issue that is sure to get the subcommittee's attention is the President's request to return Reading First funding back to the FY2007 levels. Representative Obey cut the program considerably for fiscal year 2008, citing mismanagement and conflicts of interest with those responsible for administering the program. Spellings will also have to justify the 47 education programs that are targeted for elimination, a move that has not been popular with either party in Congress.
Meanwhile, the House and Senate Budget committees are set to begin their work on drafting the FY09 budget resolution (BR), which will set the spending caps under which appropriators are directed to operate when deciding funding for the various programs. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) and House Budget Chairman John Spratt (D-SC) have already stated that this year's resolution will look much like last year's BR, ignoring the President's requested levels. Despite this apparent defiance, Congress is not in any better position than it was last year, when the President forced the majority to bring its total level of spending closer to his lower, requested levels.
The President continues to have enough support in the House to sustain a veto, giving him an edge over the Democratic majority, especially when he does not have to worry about reelection, unlike members of Congress. Leaders in Congress may not want to risk the backlash from failing to pass appropriations bill before the elections in November. In the past, the blame for government shutdowns has fallen squarely on Congress's shoulders.
NCLB Still Alive in the Senate
The clock continues to run on the re-authorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). When the Senate returns to work next week, it will have about three weeks, until the next recess on March 17, to introduce language on the critical pistons of the law: Title I, Part A and Title II, Part A. That is not a hard deadline, but a self-imposed target set by the staff in the Senate education committee. Last year, the Senate released many parts of its bill for public discussion, but the committee did not release those critical sections due to their complexity and, more important, the rancorous political atmosphere that followed the release of the House Discussion Draft. Most expect the Senate language on accountability to be considerably more flexible than was the House draft.
According to Roberto Rodriguez, Education Adviser to the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP), Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), the Committee will try to craft language that grants local educational agencies and state educational agencies more authority to use other indicators of academic success beyond the current status model and growth models. Likewise, Rodriguez reports that the subsequent interventions of section 1116 will also incorporate greater differentiation. While the details are currently scarce, the full picture of the reauthorization debate will be more clear in the coming weeks.
HEA Faces Tough Conference
When Congress returns from the week long recess on Monday, one item of unfinished business that remains on its to-do list is reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). Both chambers passed their own versions of the HEA, which is currently operating under an extension through March 31st. Due to some contentious issues between the two bills, pre-conference negotiations continue to delay the release of a final conference report. The Senate passed S. 1642 on July 24th, while the House just recently passed House Resolution 4317 on February 7th. Although both bills passed by overwhelming majorities (354-58 in the House, 95-0 in the Senate), the two bills still need to find common ground before a final conference report is released.
S. 1642 would:
- Increase the amount of information that schools and lenders must provide to students, including up-front disclosure of loan rates and terms and data on total school costs, and would ban lenders from giving schools financial aid funds or any other perks to get on a preferred lender list;
- Direct the U.S. Secretary of Education to assess costs that drive tuition increases and examine ways to contain costs and track pricing trends, alerting schools that the government will monitor tuition increases and consider ways to curb them; and
- Require colleges and universities to draft codes of conduct governing relationships with lenders, shorten the application form for federal student aid, and authorize a pilot program to allow students to learn the total aid they can expect to receive up to two years in advance.
House Resolution 4317 would:
- Give the U.S. Education Department (ED) significantly more authority to regulate private student loans, as part of a broad set of provisions - prompted by last year's investigations into illegal inducements given to colleges by lenders - aimed at cracking down on the behavior of lenders and college officials in making loans to students;
- Bar ED from issuing regulations governing higher education accreditation, designed to ensure that colleges are measuring student learning outcomes;
- Set a ceiling on the maximum Pell Grant of $9,000, and allow students to receive Pell Grant funds year-round, instead of just during the traditional academic year; and
- Require States to maintain their financial support of higher education and allow ED to withhold some funds to States that cut their college appropriations - an idea endorsed by some college officials but strongly opposed by many state legislators.
Conferees have yet to meet on the two bills, but negotiations between key staff members and members of Congress continue to take place behind closed doors. Members of Congress seemed intent on finishing the HEA this year, something they have been unable to do since 1998. While appropriations will likely be the top priority in the next few months, Congress may move quickly to get a final bill to the President before the March 31st deadline.
Resources:
Stephen Langel, "Senate Unanimously Approves Higher Ed Reauthorization," Congress Now, July 24, 2007.
Stephen Langel, "House Easily Approves Higher Ed Reauthorization; Conference Up Next," Congress Now, February 7, 2008.
WIA Remains on the Backburner
One item that seems to have fallen off of Congress's radar is reauthorizing the Workforce Investment Act (WIA). When Congress returns next week, the House Education & Labor Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will be looking to finish work on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). HELP Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy (D-MA) also listed No Child Left Behind as one of his top priorities for 2008. Meanwhile the WIA, which was scheduled for reauthorization in 2003, remains untouched this year.
After the 109th Congress failed to reauthorize the law, the 110th began preliminary measures towards a final reauthorization, but did not follow up with subsequent efforts. The White House offered its own WIA proposal last year. Under that proposal, funds appropriated for the WIA Adult, Dislocated Worker and Youth Programs and the Employment Service would be consolidated and allocated to states as a single funding stream for Career Advancement Accounts (CAA) and employment services for job seekers and employers. The proposal seeks to increase education and training opportunities for American workers, provide greater flexibility to states and local areas, and strengthen the One-Stop Career Center system.
This proposal is mirrored in the President's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal, which has been largely dismissed by the majority in Congress. The House held two hearings last summer regarding the WIA, but aside from a bill proposed by the Republican minority in the House, Congress did not produce any meaningful legislation. This year is not looking any more promising. Committee staff in both the House and the Senate admitted that the WIA is not currently a top priority for the 110th. Unless those priorities are shifted, the WIA is not likely to be reauthorized this year.
Farm Bill Deadline Looming
Perhaps the most pressing matter in Congress when it returns will be to pass the Farm Bill before it expires on March 15th, at which point the old 1949 agriculture law will take effect. Despite the fact that House and Senate leaders have been working for weeks on reaching an agreement, Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer remains skeptical that they can reach a deal that the White House will accept before the deadline. In support of his presumption, House and Senate leaders continue to disagree on the overall spending levels for the bill, and have yet to meet on the particular provisions of many of the programs in the bill. Even if an agreement on overall spending is reached, there are a lot of details that still need to be ironed out before the bill is ready for a final vote and the President's signature.
After receiving veto threats from the White House, House leaders proposed a Farm Bill that only goes $6 billion above baseline spending, a proposal that they claim the President supports. However, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) is not satisfied with such a small increase for the nation's largest agricultural bill. Harkin made a counterproposal that authorizes spending at more than $12 billion above the baseline. The Administration has stated its opposition to Harkin's proposal, which does not give the Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman much bargaining power with his House counterparts. However, to get a final bill to the President, the Senate will have to agree to the proposed spending levels, and Senator Harkin is very influential among both parties in the Senate.
While the House and Senate leaders debate the overall spending, there has been very little talk about the programmatic details of the various titles of the bill. Congress must still choose which expansion of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program it will choose to present to the President. A majority of advocacy groups support the Senate language, which will expand the program into all 50 states, authorizing $225 million for the next fiscal year. Under this proposal, all 50 states would receive 1 percent of the annual appropriation, with the remaining 50 percent doled out on a population basis. The Senate language does not include any set aside for administrative use, though the House's expansion calls for a 5 percent set aside. The issues will not be resolved until the leaders can come to terms on funding for the bill. They have just two weeks before the deadline arrives, at which point the law will revert back to the 1949 legislation, or Congress will have to pass a temporary extension of the current Farm Bill.
Resources:
Geof Koss, "Agriculture Secretary Sees Closing Window for Farm Bill," Congress Now, February 21, 2008.
