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News and updates

News and updates

What We’re Reading, January 12th

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Here’s a selection of articles that we are reading this week.

Real Power – With Republicans having a veto-proof majority in neither the House nor the Senate, a rare breed of politician:  moderate Democrats will become one of the most powerful players in the new Congress. This group will have the ability to help the Republicans accomplish their agenda. Read about it at The Washington Post. As a follow up, read about the veto battles that will start kicking off this week with  the Keystone pipeline. Read more at The Hill.

Universities Dealing with Fraudulent HR Scam – The FBI has noticed and advised of a recent internet scam where employees receive an email from the HR departments indicating a change in their employment status. The emails encourage them to log in to a site similar to the HR site, where the scammers steal credentials and redirect checks, among other things. Read about it from the FBI.

GOP Is not Against Science – Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) had an op-ed published this week that outlines why the Republican part is not against science, but pro-useful spending of tax dollars. Read it at Politico.

Legacy Building – Looking at the last two years of his Presidency, Obama has made some powerful strides and has arguably done more in the policy arena than many of his predecessors, but how will history judge him? Read an analysis from New York Magazine.

French Kiss Off – President Obama and other senior administration officials were conspicuously absent from the march in Paris following their series of standoffs and shootings. Forty-four heads of state went to Paris this weekend to participate in the protest against terror. Only Attorney General Eric Holder was in Paris, for another event, and didn’t participate in the rally. Read more about the fallout here.

Cyber Insurance – As companies and industries become more aware of their network vulnerabilities the cyber insurance industry is booming. After every high profile attack, Sony being the most recent example, the cyber insurance industry experiences a huge increase, and it’s an industry that’s growing between 35-50% annually already. With every attack, companies are exposed to huge liabilities both financial, like the Experian breach, or losses that are hard to quantify, like the Sony breach. Read about it at The Hill.

A YEAR’S WORTH OF DEADLINES – This week, the Federal Register lists deadlines for colleges and universities applying for the Perkins loan program, work-study programs or the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. Read it here.

THE EFFECT OF GEAR UP: ACT is out with a new report on the effectiveness of the GEAR UP program, which provides six-year grants to states and partnerships to boost the number of students who enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Students who participated in a GEAR UP program run by the College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium were less likely than non-GEAR UP students from higher income backgrounds to pursue college preparatory courses in high school. But they were more likely to do so than their low-income peers not served by GEAR UP. ACT is using the study as a baseline for estimating the effect of GEAR UP on lower-income students in grades 7 through 12. The CCREC, by the way, is a partnership between 14 states, ACT and the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships. Read the ACT report here.

Kilmer to Join House Appropriations Committee

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Congressman Derek Kilmer (WA-6) has been selected by his Democratic colleagues to fill a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, which is responsible for discretionary spending on government agencies and programs. He is the only new Democrat to land a spot on the powerful spending panel for the 114th Congress. Each year the committee’s 12 subcommittees are tasked with producing 12 annual appropriations bills. No word yet on which subcommittee Kilmer will sit on.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Kilmer, who just entered his second term, would be a “strong voice for bigger wages, better infrastructure and greater opportunities for every American.” Congratulations, Congressman Kilmer!

This Week in Congress

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The House begins consideration of a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security through the duration of FY15. You’ll recall DHS was not included in the FY15 CRomnibus so that the new Republican Congress could attempt to block President Obama’s executive order on immigration. However, the White House has promised to veto any attempt to do so. As a result, HR 240 is largely the same version that was negotiated at the end of the last Congress for inclusion in the omnibus. The deadline for passage is in late February, when the CR funding DHS ends.

The Senate resumes consideration of controversial legislation that would allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Several committees meet this week to organize and adopt committee rules for the 114th Congress. As House and Senate Committees begin to dive into policy, we’ll keep you updated here on the blog when hearings on topics of interest to the University take place.

What We’re Reading, January 5th — Part 2

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Here’s a selection of articles that the Federal Relations team is reading this week.

International Optimism? – The international community is cautiously optimistic that the 114th Congress will be more productive that the 113th…at least a little more productive…hopefully. Read it in The Economist.

Problem Before It Starts – A national college rating system is facing tough criticism before the draft framework has been announced. First announced by the President in 2013 as an accountability measure, both for profit and nonprofit institutes expressed concern with the idea. The framework has taken over 15 months of discussion and there is still no public plan.  Most non-profit colleges are concerned, not about rankings showing value, but about unintended consequences from the rankings. Read more at the LA Times. 

Toot, toot – Obama Administration touts their accomplishments for 2014. Read it here.

Game On! – Adding to the may-lay of the 2016 elections (which only was going to be a presidential election, the House of Representatives, and the re-election of 20 Republican Senators in Democratic states), US Senate liberal institution, Senator Barbara Boxer, announced her retirement at the end of 2016. Boxer was first elected to the US House in 1983 and the US Senate in 1992. California has not seen an open Senate seat since 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president. This race is expected to be one of the most expensive, due to the make up of California, and contentious, due to the deep bench of Democrats expected to vie for the seat.  Read more about it from The LA Times and The Washington Post.

White House Proposes Two Years of Free Community College

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In advance of his State of the Union address, President Obama is traveling to Tennessee today to announce one of his keystones of his 2015 agenda: two free years of community college.  The proposal, called America’s College Promise, is based on Republican Governor Bill Haslam, who developed and launched Tennessee Promise, which begins this year. Tennessee Promise allows any high school graduate in that state is eligible for two years of free community college tuition under the Tennessee Promise. The President’s announcement is expected to be a cornerstone of his FY16 Budget Request.

The Administration’s proposal would make community college free for any student who enrolls at least part-time and maintains a 2.5 grade point average. The plan would allow anyone admitted to a community college to attend without paying tuition, so long as they enroll in a program meeting certain basic requirements, and they remain on track to graduate in three years.Qualifying programs would be one of  two types: it would had credits that fully transfer to local public four-year colleges and universities or it would consist of training programs with high graduation rates that lead to in-demand degrees and certificates. All community college students, including those first entering community college or those going back to school, would be eligible for the program.

The White House estimates that approximately 9 million students would participate a year.

Any state participating would have to maintain funding for all higher education as well as pay 25% of the total cost. It is estimated the program could cost upwards of $15 billion per year. It is unclear how it would be paid for, but that information is expected to be made clear in the President’s Budget Request for FY16 on February 2.

Typically, the President would do these visits to promote new initiatives after the State of the Union and before the release of the President’s Budget Request. However, the President will be making a state visit to India after the State of the Union, and so promotion for big initiates is happening now in what the Administration is calling a Spoiler Alerts.

The President is expected to formally announce the America’a College Promise at 1 pm Eastern. In addition to Governor Haslam, the President will be joined by both of Tennessee’s Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander. Senator Alexander is the Chairman of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee.  Watch the announcement live here.

The Office of Federal Relations will continue to track and update information on this initiative as it becomes available.