President Obama Announces New ‘Know Before You Owe’ Student Loan Initiative

Posted on October 26, 2011October 17, 2012

President Obama announced today at a speech at the University of Colorado Denver, a new initiative called ‘Know Before You Owe’ designed to make college loans more affordable and reduce the financial burden on recent graduates – many of whom are struggling to find employment.

The administration is essentially speeding up by 2 years, a federal law that was set to go into effect in 2014. Announced today and beginning in January of 2012, students with federal loans who enroll in the Income Based Repayment Plan will experience a cap on their federal student loan repayments at 10% (currently 15%) of discretionary income and all remaining debt on these federal loans will be forgiven after 20 years (currently 25 years).

The second part of the initiative encourages students with one or more types of federal loans to consolidate them for a 0.5% interest rate reduction.

The administration estimates that this could affect up to 1.6 million borrowers and save some students hundreds of dollars a month.

NIH Considers Options for Cuts

Posted on October 19, 2011October 17, 2012

As described in this Science Insider article, NIH has begun to reach out to the community for feedback on what strategies should be considered during an era of reduced budgets. Everything seems to be on the table, from limiting numbers or grants per investigator to capping salaries charged to grants. NIH has put together a web based tool to help model these scenarios, allowing users to visualize cost savings were various strategies to be implemented. Thanks to Carrie W. at AAU who pointed out this article!

Minibus vs. Omnibus

Posted on October 17, 2011October 17, 2012

While the House is in recess this week, the Senate will continue working on FY12 appropriations measures in an effort to create a path forward on completing those bills before the continuing resolution (CR) expires on November 18^th. Later today, the Senate will test the waters with a “minibus,” which would include three spending bills together in one package of piece of legislation. The other alternative is to put all 12 spending bills together in an omnibus bill, but the House leadership has indicated that this is not a viable option for their members.

The minibus (HR 2112) being considered in the Senate this week includes an amended version of their FY12 Agriculture spending bill, as well as the Transportation-Housing Development (S 1596) and Commerce-Justice-Science (S 1572) spending bills. If the Senate is successful in moving its first minibus, it seems likely that the House will also proceed in this way to avoid the larger omnibus option.

The minibus vs. omnibus option is not the only obstacle facing Congress as they struggle to complete the FY12 process. Republicans in both the House and Senate are hoping to include a variety of policy riders to the FY12 ranging from abortion to farm dust. Some conservatives have indicated that they will attempt to include many of the same policy riders that they tried to include during the FY11 battle earlier this year. An October 4th legislative bulletin from the conservative Republican Study Committee listed several riders that are priorities for the conservative right, including a ban on federal funding for abortion providers, measures aimed at halting new environmental and net neutrality regulations, and efforts to strip funding for National Public Radio, the Palestinian Authority and the Legal Services Corp.

The problem is that a rider-laden spending bill doesn’t have a chance of approval in the Senate. Republican leadership will be forced to rely on Democrats to pass the bills, which will likely result in another threat of government shutdown as we wind down to November 18^th.

This Week in Congress

Posted on October 11, 2011October 17, 2012

The House begins their work week today at noon, with votes scheduled for later this evening. In addition to several bills related to veterans , the House will begin debate on the Panama, South Korea, and Colombia free trade agreements.

Meanwhile, the Senate begins their work week later today (around 5:30pm). The Senate is set to vote on a judicial confirmation, passage of the currency misalignment bill, and whether to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to a variation of President Obama’s jobs proposal. The jobs plan will take up much of the remainder of the short week in the Senate.

The final act in the FY12 appropriations saga may involve moving annual spending balls in a few small packages, rather than assembling them into a massive omnibus bill funding all of federal government. The Senate has signaled it’s tentative support for this plan, which the House is hoping to “sell” to their members who expected to see each of the 12 spending bills move independently. The current continuing resolution (CR) runs through November 18th so both chambers will need to come to some resolution soon as to how they’ll move forward. The one thing they all seem to agree on: finish work on FY12 BEFORE the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee makes their recommendations on or before November 23rd.

House Passes Six Week-Long CR, Heads to President for Signature

Posted on October 4, 2011October 17, 2012

The House today cleared a six week-long Continuing Resolution that the Senate passed last week. The measure will keep the government running through November 18th and sets spending at the $1.043 trillion level agreed to in the debt limit law passed in August. It allocates $2.65 billion for disaster aid for FEMA, and the offsets to be taken from a couple of loan guarantee programs to promote energy efficiency – to which Democrats objected, were eliminate in the final measure. The bill now heads to the President for his signature before the current short-term extension expires tonight.