from CongressDaily
September 22, 2008
by Humberto Sanchez

The way the federal government values the troubled mortgage assets it will buy will ultimately determine exactly how much the $700 billion bailout bill developed by Congress will affect the budget deficit, experts said today. "When we spend [federal money] to purchase these mortgage-related securities, we end up with an asset that is worth something," said Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' federal fiscal director Jim Horney. "The real question is how much are those things worth, and that is one of the reasons that the Treasury is proposing this purchase because right now the market is not functioning very well in determining what those assets are worth." Horney added that those assets will be worth "more than zero and eventually we will sell the assets and recover some portion, maybe some significant portion, maybe even all of what we spend in purchasing them," which could ultimately leave the budget deficit unaffected.

Earlier this month, CBO estimated that the federal budget deficit would total $407 billion for FY08, which ends Sept. 30, and $438 billion for FY09. On Friday, as details of the plan were emerging, an OMB spokesman said it was "too early to tell" how the Treasury's plan would affect the debt and deficit. Treasury's draft plan also calls for boosting the statutory debt limit to $11.3 trillion from the current $10.6 trillion limit. "We will implement an approach that balances the need to address problems with the market with the need to minimize the risk, exposure, [and] loss of taxpayer dollars," the OMB spokesman said, adding that the "potential exists" for the market to stabilize enough so that those funds are recovered. All Treasury transactions and those of any federal agency will be "fully transparent in the 2010 budget, the monthly treasury statement, and the financial statements of the U.S. government," he added.

Under the draft proposal, the Treasury will buy up to $700 billion of the assets -- which are backed, at least in part, by defaulted loans -- from banks and other entities, and eventually free up the credit markets. The assets have been on the books of many banks, which made them bad credit risk, and resulted in banks refusing loan money to other banks. Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert Bixby noted the draft proposal requires that the cost of the subsidy be added to the deficit, rather than just adding the spending directly, which will keep the cost of the plan below $700 billion. "If they go that route, the actual cash outlays wouldn't go on the deficit on a one-to-one basis," Bixby said. But he warned that using the proposed accounting method could shield the risk the government is taking on from the public. He said his preference would be to do it on a cash basis, "because it would be clearer to the public what was happening, and it would emphasize that this is really a huge undertaking."

by Humberto Sanchez

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:46 PM | Permalink

from Inside Higher Ed
by Kevin Carey
September 23, 2008

In 1992, college diploma fresh in hand, I decided to take a year off before going to graduate school. (By “decided” I mean “forgot to take the GRE.") A friend suggested that, in terms of good places to squander 12 months of one’s youth, it was hard to beat Chapel Hill, N.C. So we found a cheap apartment near the UNC campus and got jobs waiting tables at a barbecue restaurant. (Want to out yourself as a damn Yankee? Use the word “barbecue” as a verb.) Slinging pulled pork sandwiches paid just enough to cover rent, gas, drinks, and music. For the latter, I spent a great deal of time in Schoolkids Records, one of those iconic stores where every aisle held the promise of a long-sought European bootleg and the girl behind the counter was unattainably cool.

Earlier this year, upon returning to Chapel Hill for the first time, I walked up Franklin Street looking for some new music and perhaps a few fond memories — only to discover that Schoolkids was closed, shut down just a few months prior, after 30 years in business. Apparently, in 2008 you can’t make money selling compact discs on the main drag of a music-soaked college town, one block from a campus of 30,000 students.

For me, it was a reminder that times change. Unfortunately, the entertainment industry seems to have drawn a different conclusion, namely that that it has no choice but to wage a futile war against colleges and students that could threaten the essential purpose of higher education.

By now we’re all familiar with the Recording Industry Association of America’s dogged campaign of responding to a sea change in the way music is distributed and sold by suing 12-year olds and senior citizens for hundreds of thousands of dollars because they made $50 worth of songs available on a filing-sharing network. Truly there is no industry that hates its customers more.

The “haul grandma into court” strategy proved to be somewhat of a PR debacle. So the RIAA took aim at a less sympathetic target: college students, who are often assumed to be spoiled, amoral, and in need of some kind of comeuppance or another. There was, however, a complication: music companies can locate the Internet Protocol (IP) address of copyright infringers on their own. But they have to ask the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for the name of the actual person who “lives” at that address. And at most universities, the ISP is the university itself.

So the music industry began deputizing colleges in the hunt for music thieves, asking them to pass along “settlement letters” which offer students the chance to pay a few thousand dollars in order to forestall a ruinous lawsuit. (Since most undergrads don’t have that kind of money lying around, the industry even created a convenient Web site where students can charge the fine to one of those credit cards bearing usurious interest rates that you get after filling out an application in exchange for a free T-shirt.)

Some colleges refused to participate. Many others, wanting to cut down on illegal activity and wary of losing their legal immunity under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, agreed. That’s increasingly looking like a bad decision. The suits have done nothing to stem the tide of illegal file-sharing. Now the industry is pursuing a much more intrusive and dangerous strategy: trying to require universities to create an electronic infrastructure for snooping, privacy violation, and censorship that runs wholly counter to what an institution of higher learning should be. And in doing so, they’re using colleges’ past good-faith cooperation against them.

The technical term is “deep packet inspection,” a process by which universities can examine the contents of electronic files that pass back and forth on their networks to see if they contain copyrighted material like the latest M.I.A. single or an episode of Gossip Girl. It’s the equivalent of requiring institutions to steam open and read every letter that passes through the campus mail. It’s also expensive, slows down the entire network, and won’t actually work, because the small number of students who are responsible for the most egregious piracy also tend to be the students with the technical know-how needed to stay three steps ahead of whatever new filtering mechanisms the university might devise.

The entertainment industry insists that it doesn’t necessarily want to go this way, but that’s obviously a lie. Earlier this year, it supported legislation in Illinois and Tennessee that would have required colleges to implement “technology-based deterrents” to piracy if they received more than a certain number of infringement notices. Around the same time, colleges across the country began seeing a 20-fold increase in the number of infringement notices they received.. When colleges protested the new burden, the RIAA said their past voluntary cooperation meant they were legally obligated to comply in the future.

Then a blanket requirement to develop “technology-based deterrents” was included in the new version of the federal Higher Education Act enacted in August. It’s a safe bet that when the meaning of that phrase is inevitably litigated, industry lawyers will argue that only deep packet inspection will suffice. Perhaps they’ll cite as evidence the technology’s widespread use by censors in the Chinese government.

Why, one might ask, are colleges being forced to bear the brunt of the entertainment industry’s campaign, when (flawed industry studies notwithstanding) most piracy occurs far outside of campus walls? Simple: In the world of ISPs, colleges are small potatoes. They also receive direct state and federal funding, making them vulnerable to legislative pressure. The big content providers don’t actually care that much if undergraduates steal music — they know as well as anyone that students form tastes and preferences in college that generate lots of money down the road. This is simply a way to establish precedent, an opening skirmish in a larger, longer war with their real enemy: big ISPs like Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T. Universities are Lilliputs compared to these corporate giants, which have money, lawyers, and political clout that matches the content providers and more. The entertainment industry is trying to soften up the legal ground so it can eventually require all ISPs to automatically spy on their customers. If privacy and academic freedom suffer along the way, well, you know what they say about collateral damage.

To be clear, I’m no apologist for stealing music. There are 10,000 songs on my iPod and I paid for every one of them. Information may want to be free, but that doesn’t mean we have to do what it wants or expect musicians to make a living as itinerant troubadours who sell memorabilia on the side. I get paid to write occasionally and I’d be pretty cheesed if someone published my words without permission or compensation. But if that happened, it would be my problem — not the problem of whichever ISP happened to carry the digital words to and fro.

For half a millennium, universities have stood as places where knowledge is created, stored, and exchanged. The storage function is eroding as digital information can be housed anywhere and accessed everywhere. But the role of universities as centers of knowledge exchange has become all the more vital. Higher education allows communities of scholars and students to engage with one another in deep, sustained ways. At their best, universities also welcome political and cultural views that are far outside of the mainstream. It’s not an easy role to play, requiring strong institutions that are committed to values of inquiry and openness. As the speed and volume of communication are constantly amplified by new technologies, colleges and universities will be irreplaceable as places that nurture and sustain these kinds of substantive dialogues, free from the threat of censorship and intrusion.

It’s easy to be nostalgic for days gone by. But I’m not getting my early 20s back and the music industry will never return to the glory days when people bought millions of copies of a single physical CD full of songs, some of which they wanted to buy and some of which they didn’t, because that was the only choice they had. We’re witnessing a desperate industry shackled to a 20th century business model try to undermine one of the foundational purposes of higher education by forcing colleges to create an infrastructure for electronic spying that potentially would be available for any corporate interest with enough money to hire a lobbyist. It’s unacceptable, and an issue on which all colleges and universities should take a stand.

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:45 PM | Permalink

from Inside Higher Ed
by Edward F. Palm
September 18, 2008

But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you. (“Tommy,” Rudyard Kipling, 1892)

Picture it: Marine Corps boot camp, Parris Island, summer, circa 1965.

Five weeks into the program, two Marine recruits find themselves on mess duty, assigned to the pot shack, a small detached building out behind the mess hall proper. For the first time since arriving on the island, these two are out from under the watchful eyes of drill instructors and able to talk freely to one another. Up until then, a strict code of silence had been enforced, with recruits allowed to speak only to their drill instructors, and even then, only when spoken to.

As they dutifully scrub a never-ending series of pots large enough to cook missionaries in, they take advantage of their new-found freedom to compare notes about how they are enjoying their stay in this semi-tropical paradise.

“I’m glad I’m going to be out of here next week!” one of the recruits remarks, his voice echoing out from the bottom of the pot he was leaning into.

“Whadaya mean?” the other asks, reminding his comrade in suds that they had three weeks to go until graduation.

“I know, but I’m only 16, and I turned myself in last week. “ [The minimum enlistment age has always been 17, with a parent’s consent; 18-year-olds can enlist with or without a parent’s blessing.]

“They said they’d have me out within a couple weeks,” he adds, “in time to begin my senior year back at my old high school.” “I got in so much trouble and was generally such a pain in the ass,” he explains, “that my mother finally offered to lie about my age and sign the papers if I would go in the service. “So that’s what I did.”

“You know,” he admits, “I used to think school was the worst thing that ever happened to me. But when I get back in that classroom, they’re going to have to beat me out with a stick!”

I was the other recruit, the one who was of age and who had no Get-Out-of-Parris-Island-Free card. I’ve often wished I had made a note of that underage recruit’s name and hometown. He was almost a high school drop-out, and I would bet that he went on to become a doctor, lawyer, teacher, or some other sort of professional.

I too would emerge from the Marine Corps reborn as a serious student, but my road to Damascus lasted about four years and included a side trip to Vietnam. As one who has spent a good bit of his subsequent life in academic circles, I have often wished that we could treat many of today’s high-school juniors to summer camp at Parris Island. If nothing else, these campers would certainly come back with the material for wondrous essays on how they spent their summer vacations. But, like my young friend in the pot shack, many would come back with a new-found appreciation for the opportunity to get an education.

Would that it were possible! But the good news is that today’s colleges and universities are soon to enjoy a great influx of academically born-again, highly motivated students. War, as I can personally attest, has a way of reordering ones priorities and values, and today’s veterans will soon have access to the best education benefits available since the World War II GI Bill. This new GI Bill, in fact, is even more generous than its “Good War” predecessor. Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as any veteran who just manages to get discharged honorably, will not only get tuition, fees, books, and a living allowance. They will also be able to transfer their educational benefits to their spouses or children. Either way, we in academe stand to gain. The question is, are we really ready to welcome today’s veterans into our midst?

We do, in fact, have an unfortunate history to overcome. Not everyone in America’s ivory towers was eager to roll out the red carpet for that first wave of government subsidized veterans. The prevailing fear was that the democratization of higher education would inevitably result in the debasement of higher education. Academic standards have indeed slipped since World War II but for a whole host of cultural and societal reasons and not simply as a result of our efforts to accommodate returning GI’s.

By the time I started college in the late ‘60s, the snobbery of the late ‘40s seemed to have been largely forgotten, but some older professors still seemed to feel the need to apologize for their predecessors. My own adviser, for instance, upon learning that I had been in Vietnam, hastened to assure me that he had been very much in favor of welcoming veterans to campus and that he felt we had “a lot to contribute.” His reassurance seemed gratuitous at the time. Vietnam veterans were facing a very different sort of suspicion. We were being repeatedly portrayed in the media as psychologically maimed and socially debilitated and, therefore, potentially dangerous. I cannot say that I directly and knowingly suffered from this stigma, but then again, I stopped volunteering the information that I had been in Vietnam.

Of course, popular support for the military is much stronger now than it was then, and today’s veterans need not fear being viewed as objects of suspicion on campus. Or do they?

I have been concerned recently in finding promotional literature on upcoming symposia that seem to link the need for “Threat Assessment” or “Behavior Intervention” teams with “serving” or “integrating” returning veterans. What next?

Should we expect to hear administrators sounding the alarm? “The veterans are coming, the veterans are coming! Lock up the women and the livestock!” Frankly, I worry that this is how certain right-wing critics of academe are going to interpret the linkage of threat assessment and veterans.

In all fairness, I have no doubt that these symposia are worthwhile, and I will take it on faith that the organizers are not viewing a potential influx of veterans as a threat to campus safety and simply want to be prepared to offer non-academic psychological counseling to any veteran who may need and want it. Most faculty and administrators, I would hope, realize that, of all the horrific campus shootings we have heard about in recent years, not one of the perpetrators was a military veteran.

This is not to dispute the need itself. In light of recent events, any campus that does not have an appropriately qualified team poised to intervene in cases of troubling or threatening behavior is putting itself at great risk. But to connect this need to the anticipated influx of veterans could prove to be a public relations nightmare and could actually provoke some of the very behavior we seek to avoid. One of the paradoxes of military history is that countries that have prepared for war have generally gotten it. Individual human nature can be equally paradoxical. People who are unjustly treated as objects of suspicion, out of anger and resentment, sometimes act out in ways that justify that suspicion. But that is the worst case scenario. Rambo was only a figment of novelist David Morrell’s imagination. The great majority of veteran students who feel mistrusted and misjudged will not act our violently; they will simply drop out.

This is likewise not to deny that many of today’s combat veterans suffer from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or that campuses should not make counseling and other support services available to them. I can personally attest that a little combat goes a long way. But, again, the great majority of PTSD sufferers are not disruptive or violent and should not be viewed as such until or unless they provide reasonable cause. As for offering counseling, the advice of many a wise piano teacher regarding when to start children on lessons would seem to apply here as well: “when they ask for them.”

How then should we view and treat today’s returning veterans? A little sensitivity training may be in order. I am not a psychologist or a counselor myself, but as a veteran, I think I can I can offer five pieces of common sense advice that would go a long way toward striking the right tone as a veteran-friendly school.

First, treat veterans as you would any other student. Do not single them out for special attention. Individualized mailings or special meetings to explain the V.A.’s policies and the school’s certification requirements may be in order, but guard against any suggestion that veterans will need any more special attention than any of today’s students who may or may not be academically or culturally prepared for college. Remember that the average veteran has proven his or her ability to adapt to strange surroundings and to navigate his or her way through a more complicated bureaucracy than the average academic could endure.

Second, do not thank veterans you don’t know for their service. Most people who have served had mixed motives for enlisting in the first place and complicated feelings about the experience of having served, especially in combat. If my own post-Vietnam experience is any indication — and I think it is — it takes many veterans a long time to sort out how they feel about what they’ve been through and whether it was worthwhile — especially if the country remains divided about whether the cause was noble and the war necessary. To thank a veteran you don’t know for his or her service is to put that veteran on the spot. It assumes an ideological and political kinship that may or may not exist. I know it makes me uncomfortable. Keep in mind as well that some will doubt your sincerity, wondering if what you’re really saying is, “I’m glad you went so that I [or my son or daughter] didn’t have to go.” Wait until you know a veteran well — including how he or she really feels about having served — before deciding to offer your thanks.

Third, do not shy away from any political or social issues appropriate to your class. While they may have conformed to military discipline long enough and well enough to earn honorable discharges, veterans are not monolithic in their attitudes, ideals, and values. Expect them to be just as open-minded and diverse in their opinions and viewpoints as any other group of today’s students. Conversely, expect them to resent unfounded assumptions about their politics and personal beliefs.

By the same token, if you have never been in the military, do not assume that you really know what it is like and what it is all about. Even more important, reserve judgment about whether academe really is the superior institution. Having been both a military officer and an academic, I have learned two things: First, academics are no more open-minded than anyone else; they are just better at articulating and defending their prejudices. Second, I have known Marine colonels who are more collegial and collaborative than commanding, and I have known college presidents who are more commanding than collegial and collaborative. Do not approach today’s veterans as “people who were lost and now are found.”

Fourth, when it comes to what they did in the war, don’t ask; wait for them to decide if and when they want to tell. The experience of combat is largely ineffable. It cannot be adequately expressed or shared with people who have not experienced it, and most who have are conflicted about it. If they do choose to share, do not judge. Remember that those who have not been there do not share the same frame of reference. Hemingway had a phrase for it: “a way you’ll never be.” Remember as well that a pretentious moral empathy can be just as infuriating as an uninformed disapproval. In general, veterans prefer to let other veterans do the listening. They know they’ll understand.

Finally, expect veterans to do well. Just as the expectation that someone will behave badly can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, greeting someone with the expectation that he or she will excel can achieve the desired result. That same undergraduate adviser who puzzled me with his patronizing comment about supporting the first G.I. Bill more than redeemed himself later by soliciting my comments in class when we were discussing a story set in a World War II training camp, Philip Roth’s “Defender of the Faith.” I was able to clarify some of the military practices and customs on which the story turns, and my professor stoked my self-confidence by telling the class that “he speaks from an interesting perspective; he was in the military himself.”

Such made-to-order opportunities to bring a particular student in, admittedly, do not come along every day. And, with older students in general, instructors always need to guard against appearing to be patronizing or condescending. But, in general, we should expect veterans to be as highly motivated and appreciative of getting a second chance at an education as was that underage Marine back in the pot shack.

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:42 PM | Permalink

September 17, 2008
by Sam Dillon
from The New York Times

Battered by a worsening economy, college students are seeking federal financial aid in record numbers this year, leading Bush administration officials to warn Congress that the most important federal aid program, Pell Grants, may need up to $6 billion in additional taxpayer funds next year.

Driving the increased applications for federal aid, in part, have been nontraditional students returning to school to improve their job skills during the economic downturn, said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president for public affairs at the American Council on Education, which represents colleges and universities.

Estimates by the Department of Education suggest that the new president will face an unusually burdensome financing shortfall or the fallout that would accompany trimming the nation’s leading college aid program.

“There are a lot of things going on — more people are applying for student aid, more people are going to college, more people who qualify for the aid are showing up at school,” said Thomas P. Skelly, the Department of Education’s director of budget service, who wrote a memorandum detailing the problem to Congress.

As of July 31, 800,000 more students had applied for grants than on that date last year, according to the memorandum, which called the increase one of the largest ever year to year.

This year, more than six million low-income college students will receive Pell Grants ranging from $431 to $4,731, federal officials said.

Congress appropriated $14 billion for the grants for the current fiscal year, but because of the increase and because of accumulated shortfalls from previous years, lawmakers will need to add $6 billion in new funds next year or cut the size of the grants, Department of Education officials said.

“There may need to be an announcement in February 2009,” the memorandum warns, that Pell grants for the following academic year will be reduced.

“It’s the mother of all shortfalls,” said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “There’s more unmet need than anyone predicted.”

The Pell Grant, created in 1972, has long been the most important form of aid to needy students, and for millions, whether recent high school graduates or those who have been working for years, higher education would be impossible without such aid.

“Without a Pell, I could never have even afforded the textbooks,” said Rita Gaglio, a 35-year-old mother of two who dropped out of high school, held several jobs she called “mediocre” and now uses her grant to study at Empire State College in Albany.

Rhonda Piedmonte, 43, is also a nontraditional student who counts on Pell Grants. She is studying Italian at the State University of New York at Binghamton because her income as a flight attendant fell sharply after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The airlines have had problems, and the flight crews have had 60 percent cuts,” said Ms. Piedmonte, who will soon earn her bachelor’s degree. “I stuck it through till last year, then I just couldn’t do it any more, financially. I could never have gone back to school without a Pell Grant, and my financial hardship is so great that I’m getting other aid, too.”

While the grants are only available to the most needy students — 9 out of 10 recipients have family incomes of $40,000 or less — the number of students seeking all kinds of federal aid is growing rapidly. In the first six months of 2008, almost nine million students nationwide completed the federal aid application required for federal grants and loans, a 16 percent increase over last year.

Many community colleges are experiencing record enrollments. At Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, for example, there are 3,006 first-year students this fall, the largest freshman class in its history, and Kristine Duffy, the associate vice president for enrollment services, said more students were enrolling full-time. In Florida, Palm Beach Community College has the biggest fall term for-credit enrollment in its 75-year history — more than 23,000 students, a 10 percent increase over last year.

“When the economy declines, our enrollment increases,” said Grace Truman, director of college relations. “When jobs are plentiful, that competes with students coming to school. But when they can’t find a job, or can’t get enough hours on their job, they take more classes.”

Still, rising tuition, shrinking state aid to colleges and the shaky economy are pushing college out of reach for many low-income students. Although Congress increased the size of the Pell Grants last year, the portion of college costs they cover has been declining. According to the College Board, the maximum grant covered half a year’s study at the average public four-year college in 1987-8, but last year, it only covered about a third.

This fall, many community colleges are enrolling students who had planned to attend more expensive four-year public or private colleges, but as the economy worsened chose a less expensive alternative.

“People are feeling pinched,” said Melissa Gregory, director of student financial aid at Montgomery College in Rockville, Md., who this month has worked with new students who originally planned to attend the University of Maryland, American University, George Washington University and others. “These are students who had good aid packages, but there were a lot of loans in there, and at this point, people don’t want to take out loans.”

With tuition at Montgomery running about $3,900 for county residents, she said, many students with maximum grants can cover their tuition and still have money left for books.

“This is the college I can afford now,” said Sharmistha Chowdhury, 19, who emigrated from Bangladesh to study in the United States and hopes to be a lawyer. “I’m really grateful for the Pell. Because I’m a woman, it’s hard to do something in Bangladesh, so I decided to come here to be on my own, to be an independent girl.”

The very popularity of Pell Grants may insulate them from cuts.

“If it is threatened, you’ll hear about it,” said Edward M. Elmendorf, senior vice president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. “The decibel level will be deafening.”

After the Department of Education briefed the House Education and Labor Committee on the problem, Rachel Racusen, the committee’s spokeswoman, said its chairman, Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, was “committed to ensuring that the scholarship doesn’t decrease in the future.”

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:39 PM | Permalink

October 3, 2008
the Chronicle of Higher Education

The federal student-aid system makes college possible for a lot of people. It is also needlessly complicated and confusing.

That's the position of a group of higher-education professionals, policy experts, and researchers that issued recommendations this month for revamping the federal student-aid system.

The Rethinking Student Aid study group was coordinated by the College Board but worked independently under the leadership of Sandy Baum, a senior policy analyst at the College Board, and Michael S. McPherson, president of the Spencer Foundation, which supports research on education.

The group's report, "Fulfilling the Commitment: Recommendations for Reforming Federal Student Aid," was two years in the making.

It focuses on simplifying the financial-aid system and directing more of its resources toward the neediest students rather than those in the middle class.

The group suggested big changes — not "just tinkering around the edges" of the current system, says Donald E. Heller, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Pennsylvania State University. "Obviously that raises the question of how practical they'd be."

In its report, the study group says policy makers should:

- Get rid of the complex Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or Fafsa, and base students' eligibility for Pell grants on data from their families' income-tax returns. That would increase access to such aid; the current form is seen as a barrier for families that are not well-versed in finance or are not native English speakers.

- Base the size of Pell grants on families' adjusted gross income and size, and link eligibility to the federal poverty level.

- Replace a host of federal programs with one grant given to colleges on the basis of their success retaining Pell-eligible students. Expand the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnership program in the states.

- Eliminate federal subsidies covering interest on the loans of some borrowers while they are still in college, and introduce subsidies during the repayment period. All repayment plans would be graduated, with borrowers making smaller payments at first and larger ones later. A backup option would exist for graduates whose income is insufficient to cover their graduated payments.

- Use government funds to create savings accounts for lower-income children to help them pay for their college education.

- Create one tax credit covering both tuition and a fixed amount of college-related living expenses, and do away with the option of a tax deduction.

The study group plans to draw attention to its suggestions over the next six months, Mr. McPherson said. In the short term, it hopes to at least shift the conversation about federal student aid.

By BECKIE SUPIANO

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 27, 2008
the Hill

The Senate on Saturday passed a measure that ends a 27-year-old oil drilling ban and keeps the federal government funded until March 2009, leaving only a massive bailout bill for Wall Street on Congress’s weekend to-do list.

Senators voted 78-12 for the measure, which passed the House 370-58 on Wednesday and will fund the government until next March 6. The White House had threatened to veto earlier versions, but signaled Saturday it will accept the measure as passed.

The funding bill does not include a ban first implemented by Congress in 1981 that prevented oil companies from drilling off coastal states in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The moratorium prevented the Department of the Interior from issuing drilling leases in certain waters covered by the ban.
At least temporarily, that means the oil drilling debate in Congress is over, although senators from both parties acknowledge there is now a vacuum in U.S. policy and the ban could always be reinstated by a future president or Congress.

Saturday’s vote also goes a long way in lessening the closely-watched possibility of a lame duck congressional session after the November elections. The continuing resolution was the source of a long, torturous tug-of-war between Congress and the White House. The Bush administration had been reluctant to sign off on a long-term CR for fear of losing leverage during the president’s remaining months in office.

Congressional Democrats had wanted a CR that lasted beyond Bush’s departure to avoid having to give ground on any number of contentious issues between them and the president.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said while Bush will sign the resolution, it “stands as a reminder of the failure of the Democratic Congress to fund the government in regular order – by passing authorization and appropriations bills and sending them to the president.”

However, Fratto saluted the expiration of the oil drilling ban.

“One benefit of this broken process is the agreement to discontinue the moratoria on exploration and drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and allowing access to western oil shale reserves,” he said. “Ending these moratoria puts the United States one step closer to ending our dependence on foreign sources of energy.”

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) had threatened a procedural move that would have delayed Saturday’s final vote until Sunday, keeping senators in Washington for the rest of the weekend. But Landrieu relented, allowing the early-afternoon vote.

Landrieu is pushing a $1.12 billion agricultural disaster relief bill that is intended to aid Southern states hit hard by recent hurricanes, floods and droughts. Cotton farmers, which comprise much of Louisiana’s agricultural industry, were particularly hit hard by the recent stress and are estimated to have lost $700 million in revenue, according to Landrieu’s office.

Landrieu did secure a commitment that the Senate will consider the bill “sometime this year,” according to her office, although her aides said it was unclear if that meant next week or in a lame-duck session.

Posted by Bill Otto at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

September 24, 2008
the Chronicle of Higher Education

Washington — The U.S. House of Representatives, preparing to adjourn this Friday for the election season, has overwhelmingly passed a spending bill that would provide a substantial boost for defense research in the 2009 fiscal year while financing student aid and research at current levels through March.

The vote of 370 to 58, which comes only a few days before the October 1 start of the 2009 fiscal year, was not unexpected. Lawmakers have long planned to put off passage of most of the budget bills needed to finance the federal government until after the election, to avoid a presidential veto. The bill that passed today, known as a “continuing resolution,” would allow them to do that.

The bill would also appropriate money for 2009 in three departments: Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs. It would provide $1.84-billion for basic research in the Department of Defense, a 12.7-percent increase over the current fiscal year.

While that total may include some earmarks (the Associated Press reports that the bill contains 2,322 earmarks totaling $6.6-billion), the boost is still “substantial,” said Barry Toiv, a spokesman for the Association of American Universities. He attributed the increase to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’s push for more basic-research spending in his agency’s budget.

The bill also contains an additional $15-million for colleges affected by the Iowa floods and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and $2.5-billion for Pell Grants. A portion of that money — $750-million — would go toward reducing a shortfall in the Pell Grant program that the Education Department says could reach $6-billion by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. The remainder would be used to maintain the maximum award through March.

The measure now heads to the Senate, which is expected to pass it and send it to President Bush for his signature before October 1. —Kelly Field

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