February 13, 2013
To: Council on Federal Relations
Cc: AAU Associates
From: AAU Staff
Subject: CFR UPDATE (13-No. 6, 02-13-13)
PRESIDENT URGES END TO THE SEQUESTER, MORE R&D, AND IMMIGRATION AND STUDENT AID REFORM
During President Obama’s annual State of the Union address last night, he discussed four issues of particular interest to research universities. He urged Congress to avoid the pending budget sequester, called for significantly increasing federal research and development (R&D) spending, pressed Congress to approve comprehensive immigration reform legislation, and asked lawmakers to include “affordability and value” in determining campus access to certain types of federal student aid (see separate item below).
The Sequester. In urging Congress to take action to avert the sequester, President Obama said the automatic, across-the-board discretionary spending cuts would not only jeopardize military readiness but “devastate priorities like education, and energy, and medical research.” He reiterated his support for a “balanced approach to deficit reduction, with spending cuts and revenues.”
Bolstering R&D. After discussing the importance of bolstering U.S. manufacturing, the President said that in order to make the best products, the nation must “invest in the best ideas.” He added:
“Every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy -- every dollar. Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s. They’re developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries 10 times more powerful. Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation. Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race. We need to make those investments.”
The President also called for using some of the federal government’s oil and gas revenues to fund an “Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good.”
It is not clear if President Obama’s support of greater R&D spending will be reflected in his FY14 budget submission.
Immigration Reform. In one of the few issue areas where there appears to be meaningful bipartisan support, the President urged the House and Senate to approve comprehensive immigration reform, citing bipartisan groups working in both chambers to develop legislative proposals. He did not specifically mention creating a path to citizenship for students brought to this country illegally as young children, the DREAM Act. But he did specifically call for reforming the legal immigration system “to cut waiting periods and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy.”
--President Proposes Major Changes to Student Aid
As he did last year, President Obama slammed higher education institutions for rising costs, saying that “skyrocketing costs price too many young people out of a higher education, or saddle them with unsustainable debt.” He went on to say, “taxpayers can’t keep on subsidizing higher and higher and higher costs for higher education. Colleges must do their part to keep costs down, and it’s our job to make sure that they do.” He called on Congress to change the Higher Education Act so that “affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid.”
The President also promised to release a new “College Scorecard” this morning to enable parents and students “to compare schools based on a simple criterion—where you can get the most bang for your educational buck.” The Scorecard can be viewed here.
Page 5 of the supplementary material available on the White House website explicitly mentions the accreditation process, including the possibility of an “alternate system of accreditation”:
“Holding colleges accountable for cost, value and quality: Today, the federal government provides more than $150 billion each year in direct loan and grant aid for America’s students. In an era of limited resources, we must allocate the federal investment in student aid wisely, in order to promote opportunity in higher education and ensure the best return on investment. The President will call on Congress to consider value, affordability, and student outcomes in making determinations about which colleges and universities receive access to federal student aid, either by incorporating measures of value and affordability into the existing accreditation system; or by establishing a new, alternative system of accreditation that would provide pathways for higher education models and colleges to receive federal student aid based on performance and results.”
REPUBLICAN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT’S SPEECH INCLUDES CALL FOR IMMIGRATION, STUDENT AID REFORM
The Republican response to the President’s speech was provided by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who addressed many of the same issues as the President, including expressing support for comprehensive immigration reform and calling for changing federal student aid policies.
On immigration, Senator Rubio said:
“We can also help our economy grow if we have a legal immigration system that allows us to attract and assimilate the world’s best and brightest. We need a responsible, permanent solution to the problem of those who are here illegally. But first, we must follow through on the broken promises of the past to secure our borders and enforce our laws.”
On college costs, the Senator said that tuition costs have grown too fast, so “we need to change the way we pay for higher education.” He added,
“A 21st century workforce should not be forced to accept 20th century education solutions. Today’s students aren’t only 18 year olds. They’re returning veterans. They’re single parents who decide to get the education they need to earn a decent wage. And they’re workers who have lost jobs that are never coming back and need to be retrained.
We need student aid that does not discriminate against programs that non-traditional students rely on – like online courses, or degree programs that give you credit for work experience.”
DEFENSE AND NONDEFENSE ADVOCATES URGE HALT TO SEQUESTER AT PRESS CONFERENCE
AAU President Hunter Rawlings joined representatives from a broad group of defense, healthcare, higher education, infrastructure, and social welfare organizations at a press conference on February 11 to urge policymakers to take immediate action to stop the budget sequester. Participants expressed concern that the spending cuts would send the nation’s economy back into recession, cost more than two million jobs over the short term, and jeopardize our technological and economic future.
President Rawlings spoke at the press conference on behalf of the Task Force on American Innovation (TFAI), an alliance of business, academia, and scientific societies, as did Peter McPherson, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). The two released a new TFAI letter to policymakers at the event.
The text of President Rawlings’s remarks is available here; a video of his remarks can be found here. The C-SPAN recording of the entire press conference can be viewed here.
Members of the CFR are encouraged to use these materials as they make the case to Members of Congress about the importance—to the campus, community, state, and the nation—of averting the sequester.
RESEARCH COMMUNITY LETTER DETAILS DANGERS OF FURTHER CUTS TO NIH BUDGET
AAU joined with 272 other organizations and institutions in sending a letter to all Members of Congress expressing concern that imposing the budget sequester on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget will have “negative consequences for the health of all Americans.” Organized by the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, the community sign-on letter says that shrinking the investment in biomedical research supported by NIH would sacrifice real opportunities for innovation and medical advances, jeopardize U.S. leadership in medical research, cost thousands of jobs, and reduce economic activity, and harm Americans’ health.
NEW VIDEO EDITORIALS DECRY IMPACT OF SEQUESTER ON SCIENCE AND INNOVATION
Members of America’s research community continue to weigh in against the budget sequester with individual video messages to Congress about the devastating impact of these across-the-board budget cuts on science and innovation. The new set of messages, released today by ScienceWorksForU.S., feature university chancellors, research officers, faculty, and students discussing the potential effects of the drastic budget cuts on their work. They urge Members of Congress to find alternatives to the sequester.
The video editorials are being released by ScienceWorksForU.S. throughout February. The goal is to impress upon lawmakers the importance of finding deficit reduction solutions that allow the country to continue to invest in basic scientific and medical research and other things that contribute to economic growth, security and health. The first set of videos was released on February 5.
ScienceWorksForU.S. is a project of AAU, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and The Science Coalition (TSC).
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