To: AASCU Presidents, Chancellors and Government Relations staff
From: Ed Elmendorf, Senior Vice President of Government Relations and Policy Analysis
Barmak Nassirian, Director of Federal Policy Analysis
Makese Motley, Assistant Director of Federal Relations and Policy Analysis
Re: Federal Update Appropriations, HEA Reauthorization and Other Issues
Date: July 24, 2014
Senate Appropriations
Earlier today, the Senate appropriations released the committee report
for the FY 2015 Labor-HHS-Education bill as reported by the
subcommittee. Several items in the committee report should be of
interest to higher education. First, Pell Grants are exempt from
across-the-board budget cuts. Second, the bill restores the
Ability-To-Benefit eligibility for students enrolled in the career
pathways program. Third, the bill would “consolidate Perkins Loans into
the Federal Work Study program,” a fairly consequential change that we
have not fully absorbed. Finally,
it proposes a cap on graduate and parent loans. The cap, which would
differ depending on whether it is a loan to a parent or a loan to a
graduate student, could be set at a fixed dollar amount. Parent Plus
loans could be capped at $57,000 the loan limit that currently applies
to independent undergraduates. The cap could also be set as a portion of
a programs’ average tuition across similar institutions.
Other non-higher education provisions are the elimination of the
Childcare Development Block Grant by consolidating into the Opportunity
Grant Program. Head Start would be converted into a block grant to the
states and Title I-A funding would be converted into a flexible block
grant, on the condition that states spend the money on low-income
children.
All of the above changes may not actually occur, because there is
every expectation that Congress will be forced to pass another
continuing resolution (CR) before the beginning of the FY15 fiscal year
on October 1, 2014.
A likely CR would essentially keep pushing the budget down the road
leaving in place nearly all of the current spending levels.
House Bills
The House Committee on
Education and the Workforce is moving with its efforts to reauthorize
the Higher Education Act in a different way than its counterpart in the
Senate. Unlike the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)
Committee’s unified approach to the task, the House has taken a more
modular approach by offering several stand-alone bills addressing
different pieces of reauthorization. The first of these, the
Strengthening Transparency in Higher Education Act (H.R. 4983),
requires the Education Department to create a “college dashboard”
website with institutional information to help families decide on a
college. Data on completion rates, enrollment, net price and loan debt
and repayment rates would be included. A narrower bill, H.R. 5134,
introduced by Rep. Virginia Foxx, extends by one year the terms of the
National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity and
the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. AASCU along with
our association counterparts sent a letter on this bill and several
other bills earlier this week. That letter can be found here.
While these bills have passed the House of Representatives, we don’t
expect these bills or a Higher Education Act Reauthorization bill to
pass the full Congress before the end of 2014.
IRA Charitable Rollover
Last week the House
passed a package of tax related bills including, H.R. 4619, the
Permanent IRA Charitable Contribution Act, offered by Representative
Aaron Schock (R-IL). The legislation would permanently extend the IRA
charitable rollover, which expired at the end of 2013. It highly
unlikely that a bill will pass both the House and the Senate due to the
fact that that the bill would create new spending that would add to the
deficit. The IRA charitable rollover allows taxpayers older than 70
½ to donate up to $100,000 from IRAs to charitable organizations,
including universities, without the withdrawals being considered taxable
income.
Net Neutrality
Last week AASCU
along with several other associations submitted comments on the FCC”s
proposed net neutrality rules, urging the Commission to preserve an open
Internet without pay-to-play fees or “fast lanes” being contemplated
under the euphemistic legal label of “paid prioritization.” We would
encourage you to take a look at our comments here.
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