Blog entry

Money to Learn

Terrance Heath — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:03:29 -0400

It's the kind of thing that's easily written off as a photo opportunity: a presidential candidate sitting down with a worried student and a financial aid administrator, working out a plan to help the student pay for her education. But, not if the candidate is one who understands the importance of education, and the difficulty of paying for it. So, when I read about Barack Obama helping a college student with her tuition concerns, it made sense.

A tearful Wayne County Community College student got advice and encouragement from Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday, as he touted his plan to improve financial aid and tax credits to college students.

Marilyn Pace is about $1,500 short of paying for tuition and supplies for her dental hygiene studies, she told Obama at a meeting arranged by his aides. After she described the costs of supplies and exams, gas to get to and from classes and her father's disability, which keeps him from working, a financial aid counselor told her and Obama that private loans should be able to close her financial gap -- prompting tears from her and encouraging words from the candidate.

It may have something to do with understanding what it's like to go into debt for an education.

"Unfortunately, another thing that Michelle and I have in common is that we left school with a mountain of debt," he said. "Michelle I know had at least $60,000. I had at least $60,000, so when we got together we had a lot of loans to pay. In fact, we did not finish paying them off until probably we'd been married for at least eight years, maybe nine. And like a lot of families, we were still dealing with the cost of our own education when we had to start thinking about saving for our children."

Which is probably why he's proposing help for students struggling with the cost of getting an education.

"This isn't an issue you hear Sen. John McCain talk about much," Obama said. "It's not just that he doesn't have a real plan to make college affordable. It's that he has voted time and time again to stop us from making college affordable."

Obama has proposed a $4,000 tax credit his campaign says would pay nearly all the annual expenses for community college students and two-thirds of costs at four-year public schools. In return, students would have to perform 100 hours of community service each year. He also would make changes that reduce administrative costs and bank subsidies in federal student loans, and simplify the financial aid application process.

"Every college-savings account starts with a job, and Barack Obama has proposed tax hikes on over 21 million small businesses that drive job growth," said Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for McCain.

There's more than a little irony in the McCain campaign's response — or non-response — to Obama's proposal, because much of the difficulties students and families face in paying for education are direct consequences of conservatism and its impact on our economy. The credit crisis, brought to us in part by McCain's own economic advisor, has driven some student lenders out of the market, and a few into bankruptcy.

It's dried up the other resources families once used to finance their kids' education; bank loans and home equity lines of credit are harder to get. More than 70% of parents who responded to a survey just a few months ago indicated that they were "very concerned" about how they would pay for college.

Parents are concerned because they know what I mentioned earlier, that upward mobility is linked to education. Good jobs are harder to find for less educated workers, and even educated, white collar workers are having trouble finding decent work.

The McCain campaign may say that every college savings plan starts with a job, but as Alex pointed out, the cost of tuition has gone up 39% since 2001, while the median household income has gone down 2%. Pell Grants have been whittled down to the point of covering less than half the college costs they used to cover. The Bush administration stripped over $12 billion from the federal student loan program to fund tax cuts for the wealthy. And in the economy we're left with after 7.5 years of conservative rule, jobless claims are rising, Americans are $1.7 trillion poorer than we were even earlier in the fiscal year, low-income and middle-class families are struggling just to pay for utilities, more Americans are using food stamps than ever before, some are stockpiling food, and others are finding empty shelves at food banks overwhelmed by an unfortunate trio of economy-driven circumstances: a drop in donations, an increase in the number of people needing their help, and ever increasing food prices.

In the America conservatism has given us, having a job doesn't even guarantee a family will eat, let alone send their kids to college.

A common myth states that "if you can get a job, you can make a living in America", but the gap between a living wage and jobs that pay a living wage is ever-widening. Living below the poverty line places a massive strain on a household budget and little or no money makes it impossible to purchase adequate and nutritious food.

Meanwhile, hedge funds have been prowling the halls of Congress, looking for an angle on the student loan market. The same velociraptors of Wall Street, whose predatory prowess has left countless neighborhoods littered with the boarded up, gutted, foreclosed homes of subprime mortgagees — aided and abetted by the likes of former Senator and McCain's economic advisor, Phil Gramm, who deftly moved to keep credit swaps — the financial fuel the powered the subprime bonanza — unregulated by … well — anyone, really. The same financial entities that were still left virtually unregulated by the Bush administration's voluntary "best practices." Only two dozen of the 8,000 hedge funds roaming the financial frontier signed on to the "best practices" when they were rolled out. And it remains to be seen whether they will be reined in by the new regulatory powers Henry Paulson is calling for at the Federal Reserve.

The same Wall Street firms are looking for an opening in the student loan market.

And they just might find one. In one of the latest responses to the credit crisis, banks are starting to bypass two-year colleges — the community colleges for-profit institutions that are often the gateway to higher education for the country's neediest students. Financial administrators at these institutions have been able to find fallfack lenders — though at a cost to students of time and money — but how much longer will such lenders be easy to find? And students?

“If we put too many hurdles in their way to get a loan, they’ll take a third job or use a credit card,” said Jacqueline K. Bradley, assistant dean for financial aid at Mendocino College in California. “That almost guarantees that they won’t be as successful in their college career.”

And they may also be more vulnerable to predatory lending. Last year an investigation into relationships between lenders and universities yielded reports of corruption, as kickbacks to financial aid directors and deals with student lenders led to arrangements that benefited schools, lenders, and financial aid offers, at students' expense. The investigation also yielded proposed reforms, but those reforms don't apply to private loans that are not federally backed, whose rates can rise unchecked. States like California have met with heavy opposition from the banking industry when they have attempted to establish minimal standards of of ethical behavior for lenders and financial aid officers.

The pieces of the puzzle are easy to assemble, and the picture may be perilous for the neediest students — who need money to learn, but don't have "money to burn." So, it's appropriate that Obama visited a two-year college, and reached out to students while announcing a plan that would help those students pay for the education they will need to improve their lives and their chances of success in a changing economy, and deny those velociraptors of the financial world one more hunting ground.

Conservatives Can't Vouch for Vouchers, But They Will Mislead

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 11:45:45 -0400

The propaganda machine supporting school vouchers, headquartered in the office of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, is determined not to let the facts get in the way of conservative ideological spin.

The press release for a report released Monday on the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program—a masterfully euphemistic name for a program that uses public funds to pay for private school education—is headlined: "Report Reaffirms Academic Gains for D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Participants."

The report actually says this:

After 2 years, there was no statistically significant difference in test scores in general between students who were offered an OSP scholarship and students who were not offered a scholarship. Overall, those in the treatment and control groups were performing at comparable levels in mathematics and reading.

The mean scores for D.C. Opportunity Scholarship students were a whole three points higher than the mean scores of students outside the program in reading (621.30 vs. 618.12). They were virtually identical in mathematics (614.09 vs. 613.85).

In fact, it is difficult to find anything in the actual report that would justify the claim that the 1,900 students in this voucher program—which the administration is seeking $18 million to continue—are better off than they would be if those same dollars—as well as the same parental engagement and other factors of school success—were invested in the public schools that these students would otherwise attend. (This is one reason D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton has been a longtime opponent of the voucher program and, The Washington Post reports, is pressing to have it phased out.)

Yet, Spellings issues a statement that runs contrary to the Bush administration's constant drumbeat of insisting that government programs that don't measure up get the ax:

"While [the report] reflects the reality that this program is still in its early stages, this report also tells me that no one in a position of responsibility can sever this lifeline right now and leave these kids adrift in schools that are not measuring up-not when they have chosen to create a better future for themselves."

Ideology trumps results. So does the twisted logic that says there are only two choices—allow the right to outsource public education to private interests that have little or no public accountability, or "set kids adrift in schools that are not measuring up."

What about a real partnership between federal officials and local communities to actually improve the public schools—backed by the resources actually needed to do the job? That was the promise of the No Child Left Behind law that has been badly broken by the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress.

There is an alternative policy approach to the false promise of school vouchers. Learn more about it at BoldApproach.org and show your support for educational reform that would actually make a difference for our children.

Making Sense of the Rising Cost of College

Alex Carter — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:45:39 -0400

As college students celebrate graduation this May, their joy is combined with the harsh reality they face post-graduation--many of these students will graduate with unmanageable levels of loan debt that they can not afford basic necessities. Conservatives will tell you they are dedicated to expanding educational opportunities and in the same breath let the banking and student loan industry know, “I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

The basics are clear:

- When Bush took office in January 2001, the cost of tuition at a public four year institution was $3,501. The cost of tuition in 2006-07 was $5,685 —an increase of 39%; even at the same time median household income has decreased 2% .
- The social safety nets are failing under Bush’s watch: over 400,000 qualified high school graduates can not attend college each year because of its burdensome cost, the Pell Grant only covers 33% of a student’s annual college costs (in 1975, the Pell Grant covered 84%) , and he stripped over $12 billion from the federal student loan program to fund his tax cuts for the wealthy.

The connections are clear as well; President Bush and conservatives did everything to fatten the pockets of the bank and loan industry while ignoring the plight of qualified high school graduates obtaining a college education. Conservatives did nothing to help promote college affordability and accessibility for years. Pell Grants remained at the same level, affordability was not addressed, and state-tuition levels continued to skyrocket. Bush’s yearly budgets contained massive cuts in higher education funding and favorable policies to the $85 billion private student loan industry.

However, Bush and conservatives made sure the bank and loan industry was taken care of. The private student loan industry’s cozy relationship with Republicans and their “Raid on Student Aid” was of no coincidence. During the tenure of former Chairman of the Committee on Education and Workforce Rep. Job Boehner (R-OH) told the Consumer Bankers Association,

“Relax. Stay calm…at the end of the day, I believe you’ll be at least satisfied, or even perhaps happy….
Know that I have all of you in my two trusted hands.”

It just so happened, the student loan industry contributed over $290,000 to Boehner’s PAC and the private student loan goliath Sallie Mae was the number one contributor to his campaign in the 2003-04 election cycle.

We must continue to connect the dots; Bush and conservatives in Congress do not care about college accessibility and affordability; however, they place the banking and loan industry in their “two trusted hands.”

For more about the college aid issue, click here (www.ourfuture.org/makingsense2008)

Education: Losing Ground in Global Competitiveness

Alex Carter — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 10:45:45 -0400

Newly released data by the Department of Education illuminates the educational landscape of America. There is much for progressives to feel good about; enrollment in Pre-K programs has dramatically increased since 1980; the pupil-to-teacher ratio is declining—meaning classrooms are not as packed as before (even though overcrowding is a major problem for urban school districts); the number of high school students graduating continues to grow, and the number of people over the age of 25 with a high school, bachelor’s or graduate degree has increased as well.

However, some disturbing findings in this report underscore vital needs of our education system that have not truly been addressed: teacher’s salary increased only 1%-after inflation since 1995-96. The result is that inadequate pay leads to a disastrous teacher retention rate. In addition to being underpaid, teachers are forced to spend their own money for classroom supplies —because otherwise their students just won’t have them—on top of paying off college loans and the cost of living.

The report also finds that the average reading score of 17-year old students is the same in 2004 as it was in 1971. These students are at a transition stage from which they will take their education into real-world application or continue to college—however, the lack of improvement in reading skills leaves them—— unprepared for most future endeavors.

Finally, the most troubling news is about how our educational system compares with the rest of the world. The Department of Education provides statistics of the United States ranking in comparison of other countries educational systems in four areas: mathematics, reading, science, and problem solving. The results are astonishing.

• Mathematics—The United States ranks 25th out of the 30 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and is well below the average score.
• Reading—The United States ranks 16th out of the 30 OECD countries and barely beat the average score (by 1 point).
• Science—The United States ranks 20th out of the 30 OECD countries and is well below the average score.
• Problem Solving—The United States ranks 25th out of the 30 OECD counties and is well below the average score.

In comparison to previous years, the United States is making improvements at home. Compared to the rest of the world, we are losing ground.

Decoupling Education & Upward Mobility

Terrance Heath — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:44:22 -0400

Like some middle class kids in my generation, education was a high priority. In my house it was emphasized as the doorway to upward mobility. (The idea of learning for learning's sake was something I discovered later.) If I wanted a "good job," I'd better — at least — get an undergraduate degree. It wasn't a question of if I'd go to college, but where, as far as my parents were concerned.

"Where you'll go," I recall my dad saying, "I don't know. But you're going to somebody's university." My dad's desire for me to go to college was probably due in part to his never having been. The son of sharecroppers, he left the far via the draft, and never looked back. Despite his lack of a college degree (he did earn technical school degree, as I recall), my dad managed to find a "good job" and make a "good living" to provide for his family. He believed getting a college education would help me do the same and do better.

My dad did well despite not going to college, and I believe I've benefited immensely because of the college education he helped me get. I doubt I'd be doing the kind of work I'm doing without it. But in the current economy, stories like my dad's and mine may be fewer and far between.

I was reminded of my Dad when I read that good jobs are harder to find for less educated workers.

The steady loss of "good jobs" by less-educated workers has left them more vulnerable to recession than at any time in nearly 30 years, and signs are mounting that a recession is either already here or coming soon.

High-school dropouts and even high-school graduates who lack specialized job training have seen their already limited employment prospects steadily decline during America's decades-long shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service economy.

For how man American families was this kind of job — a blue collar job with a livable wage and good benefits — a doorway to upward mobility, securing the education of their children, and ensuring they might do better economically than their parents? My family was one of them, and I wonder if one of the reasons my dad emphasized education for us was because he was already seeing that shift occurring.

Of course, the "good jobs" described in the article didn't simply vanish. They had help disappearing.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research defines a "good job" as one with health insurance, a pension plan and earnings of at least $17 per hour. That works out to about $34,000 a year, the inflation-adjusted median income for men in 1979, when U.S. manufacturing jobs numbered 19.6 million, an all-time high.

Since then, however, the economy has lost nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs — 52,000 in February alone. Among them were many of the 3.5 million "good jobs" lost from 2000 to 2006, according to John Schmitt, a senior economist at CEPR.

As those jobs disappeared, many blue-collar workers were forced to take jobs with far less pay and benefit security.

...Helping fuel the loss of good jobs has been a decline in union membership, industry deregulation, increased outsourcing of state and government services and economic policies that focus more on containing inflation than on maintaining full employment, Schmitt said.

Anti-unionization, deregulation, and increased outsources are all hallmarks of contemporary conservatism. So, at least we know who to thank for our current situation. But that's the unspoken message of conservative economic philosophy in a globalized economy: the only way Americans can "compete in a global economy" as envisioned and delivered by conservatism is to accept a lower standard of living. As low as the market demands. How low? Read up on working and living standards in just about any country you can find on any label on just about anything in your own house.

When those high school graduates and high school dropouts find few of the kind of "good jobs" mentioned above are available to them, they'll find themselves increasingly competing with educated, experience, unemployed white-collar workers for those jobs.

An unusually large share of workers have been out a job for more than six months even as overall unemployment has remained low, a little-noted weakness in the labor market that analysts said threatens to intensify the impact of the unfolding economic downturn.

In November, nearly 1.4 million people -- almost one in five of those unemployed -- had been jobless for at least 27 weeks, the juncture when unemployment insurance benefits end for most recipients. That is about twice the level of long-term unemployment before the 2001 recession.

The problem is ensnaring a broader swath of workers than before. Once concentrated among manufacturing workers and those with little work history, education or skills, long-term unemployment is growing most rapidly among white-collar and college-educated workers with long work experience, studies have found, making the problem difficult for policymakers to address even as it grows more urgent.

"What has happened is a polarization of the labor market. It was very strong at the very top and very strong until recently at the bottom," said Lawrence F. Katz, a labor economist at Harvard University. "But in the recent weak recovery, and now recession, demand has been very weak" for jobs in the middle.

..."When people are losing good jobs these days, they have a very hard time getting back to the type of job they had before," said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that presses for more generous unemployment benefits.

Are we approaching a point at which education is no longer a reliable route to upward mobility? Can people no longer educate themselves in to the middle class and beyond?

Probably. What this means is that educated, skilled workers facing unemployment in the context of the global marketplace, will be faced with the reality of accepting work that their skills and experience surpass, and with it they will accept lower wages, fewer benefits and a lower standard of living. These are people who were sold the idea of membership in the ownership society, some of whom maybe even "voted like owners," who will take their place in the society of the owned because they have bills — subprime mortgages, credit card bills, etc., — to pay.

The final adjustment may be the looming reality that — as college education is priced beyond reach for many Americans, and student loans become harder to get — the ranks of college educated, skilled workers may decrease to the same level as the demand for such workers. And upward mobility will disappear in the education gap.

Economic mobility, the chance that children of the poor or middle class will climb up the income ladder, has not changed significantly over the last three decades, a study being released on Wednesday says.

The authors of the study, by scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, warned that widening gaps in higher education between rich and poor, whites and minorities, could soon lead to a downturn in opportunities for the poorest families.

The researchers found that Hispanic and black Americans were falling behind whites and Asians in earning college degrees, making it harder for them to enter the middle class or higher.

This will effect students in areas hit by the subprime mortgage crisis and foreclosures as school budgets are impacted by declining revenues from property taxes. The conditions under which students in these communities must learn will become less and less conducive to learning.

As is often the case with conservatism, we don't find out how bad things are until they've gotten almost too bad to tackle. Preferably, perhaps, we don't find out until something reaches near disaster proportions. From the war in Iraq to the subprime mortgage crisis, seven years of conservative failure have left us with a set of crises that will require a great deal of time to fix before we can even think about progressive change.

Add "the dropout disaster" to the list, brought to us care of "No Child Left Behind."

When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.

One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.

...Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.

...The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.

The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.

NCLB may be one of the reasons kids drop out, as it focuses more on "teaching to the test" and on individual students' learning needs. Schools are so torn between helping struggling students and meeting NCLB requirements that some students fall through the cracks.

Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law’s mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school’s performance can rise.

No study has documented that the law has produced such an effect nationwide. Experts say they believe many low-scoring students are prodded to leave school, often by school officials urging them to seek an equivalency certificate known as a General Educational Development diploma.

“They get them out so they don’t have them taking those tests,” said Wanda Holly-Stirewalt, director of a program in Jackson, Miss., that helps dropouts earn a G.E.D. “We’ve heard that a lot. It happens all over the system.”

Schools are so focused on meeting NCLB requirements, that they have no time to focus on meeting the needs of students who may have learning disabilities or difficulties — or who may just learn differently than the methods NCLB requirements demand. So, now NCLB is being adjusted again.

But, to a degree, the damage has been done. And we have more dropouts than we thought. What they're going to do — what they'll be able to do, or what there is for them to do — is anybody's guess. But — in a economy where decoupling seems to apply not only to economies, but to the relationship between education, employment, and upward mobility — their stories probably won't be like my father's or like mine.

Now, I'm a father. I look at our five-year-old, and I see how well he's reading already, how curious he is, and how sharp his mind is. I even look at our three-month-old, and I see how he loves to be held upright so he can see the world around him, and how he's already started figuring out that he can make something happen when he pushes one of his favorite toys. We've already started saving for their educations, but I'm no longer sure that education will ensure for them, what my father hoped it would for me.

Instead, I find myself hoping their stories will be somewhat like mind. I know I'm supposed to hope their stories turn out better, and I'll do everything I can to make that happen. But if "making the grade" is no longer a path to "moving on up," then it looks like the decoupling of education from employment, upward mobility, and the American Dream is at least underway. Or maybe it's already happened.

College Costs: Reality Bites Again

Alex Carter — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 13:16:10 -0400

The College Board this week released its new Trends in Higher Education report, and it shows how our lack of public investment is putting a college education out of reach of working families.

The report examines college costs, financial aid, and the importance of a college education. It notes that while for the 2007-2008 school year tuition increases at four-year colleges are not as high as they have been for the past five years, total federal grant funding for undergraduates has still not caught up, when inflation is taken into account. In fact, the report says, "total federal grant funding to undergraduates was still lower in 2006-07 than it was three years earlier, after adjusting for inflation."

This is happening at the same time legislatures in many states are not appropriating enough funds to cover legitimate increased education costs.

The College Board report makes clear why the College Cost Reduction and Access Act is needed:

Tuition and fees at public and private universities rose at a rate of more than double the rate of inflation.
While undergraduate federal borrowing declined from 2005 to 2007, private undergraduate loans grew 12 percent during the same period.
There is a positive correlation between higher levels of education and higher earnings for all ethnic groups, and graduates are more likely to have employer-provided health and insurance and pension benefits.

The importance of a college education cannot be overstressed. As tuition rates rise and median household incomes decline—median household income for African Americans, for example, has declined 8 percent from 2000 to 2006—college education is needed more than ever in this age of technological advancement.

That is why it is important to support grassroots organizations in the struggle to make college more affordable, such as the Campaign for College Affordability. Critical to the effort to keep college education affordable and accessible is to promote federal loan programs instead of the private loan industry and to hold state legislatures accountable for adequately funding higher education.

A $46 Billion Slap In The Face

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:53:29 -0400

The irony of President Bush's demand on Monday for $46 billion in additional emergency spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan—an irony missed by most of the news media—is that it occurred as the Senate debated an appropriations bill for domestic education, labor and human services programs that President Bush has threatened to veto—over a comparatively minor $9.6 billion.

Once again, we have an administration fighting over what is, in the scale of a $3 trillion budget, dimes and quarters when it comes to needs of ordinary families, while demanding Congress shovel money, no questions asked, to feed the war machine in the Middle East. For anyone who really cares about spending priorities, the President's statement was a $46 billion slap in the face of a public sick of his budget posturing.

A read through the White House veto threat for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill, S. 1710, offers a window into the absurdity of the administration's posturing. Among President Bush's objections:

An allocation for the Department of Education that is $4.1 billion over the administration's request.

An increase of $87 million over the administration's request for hospital preparedness grants. (Hmm, homeland security spending the administration actually criticizes.)

A proposal to give the Department of Labor $1.3 billion more than the administration requested, most of which would be allocated to job training programs.

President Bush's request is over and above the nearly $200 billion already spent on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And that money, in turn, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted, is on top of the $450 billion in emergency funds Congress has authorized for the war since it began.

As Reid pointed out, in this quote from The Baltimore Sun's blog:

"President Bush wants us to rubber stamp another $200 billion in war funds - all borrowed money, none of it paid for - for next year alone. But when we sent a bipartisan CHIP bill to his desk to provide health insurance for the children of working families, the President called it too expensive. Let's remember, every dime of the money for CHIP was paid for.
"It's no wonder the American people are frustrated. Democrats continue to fight for America's priorities while the President continues investing only in his failed war strategy - even as most of his own Pentagon leadership is now on record saying that our ground forces are stretched dangerously thin because of the current Iraq strategy."

President Bush has painted congressional Democrats as the ones stymieing forward movement on the federal budget, but in this case it is Senate Democrats who have shown the most willingness to compromise. One of President Bush's objections was expanded funding for embryonic stem-cell research. According to Congressional Quarterly, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee handling the Labor-Health and Human Services budget, said Democrats are dropping that provision.

"So we have met the president halfway, and we're hopeful that he will join us in this spirit of bipartisan compromise," Harkin said. "I am an optimist, and I hold out hope that if the president examines the substance of the bill, he will see that the additional funding above his budget request goes to essential programs and services that have been shortchanged in recent years."

If President Bush was really concerned about excessive spending on ineffectual programs, he would allow a more critical eye on the money poured into an enterprise that has not enhanced our security but has proven to be a feast for corrupt private contractors and others who profit from war and destruction.

If he wants to use a vote on this $46 billion as a test of who really "supports the troops," let him. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey has said he will not take up the request until next year, and when he does, he's promised to add language mandating a withdrawal timetable. Legislators with a backbone and a commitment to the will of the majority of the American people will vote for that money—to fund the quick end of the war and the return of the troops to their families.

Bush Exceeds His Credit Limit

Alex Carter — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 16:00:13 -0400

On Thursday, President Bush took credit for signing the College Cost Reduction and Access Act. His claims stand history on its head. Bush said the bill:

"[E]xpands one of America's most important and successful education initiatives—the Federal Pell Grant Program. For the last six years, I've worked to make sure that we expand Pell Grants."

He seems to have forgotten that he was president during the last six years. President Bush and the Republicans, when they were in the majority in Congress, repeatedly defeated Democratic attempts to increase Pell grants. Since 2001, Pell Grant maximum awards to individuals have fallen by $99. In the past three years, total Federal Pell Grant expenditures declined by $1 billion.

Bush even threatened to veto the bill he is now taking credit for. But a majority of Republicans recognized the change in the political winds and signed onto the Democratic legislation, giving it a veto- proof majority. Only then did he decide to sign it.

How dare President Bush take credit for this piece of progressive legislation? The real heroes are leaders Rep. George Miller and Sen. Edward Kennedy, and thhe grassroots coalition, the Campaign for College Affordability.

The Cost of College: A Win for the Good Guys

Eric Lotke — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:17:05 -0400

What a difference a year makes. The Republican-controlled 109th Congress doubled student interest rates and cut $12 billion out of student aid.

The new Democratic 110th Congress has cut the student interest rates and put $20 billion into aid programs. The money comes directly out of the banks' pockets and into the pockets of students and working families.

Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats get credit, to be sure. College affordability was one of the "Six in '06" campaign promises, and Pelosi hit it out of the ballpark. Representative George Miller, D-Calif., was a hero, and Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy worked hard in the other chamber.

But real credit goes to the progressive community. The Campaign for College Affordability banded together to drive for reform. Members such as U.S. PIRG, the United States Student Association, Campus Progress and the Campaign for America's Future provided tactical intelligence and public support. They gave the members the cover they needed to overcome veto threats without watering down the legislation.

My past blog post discussed the payola for the banks, and our report and web page show how college is soaring out of reach (from 2000 to 2006, household incomes went down 2 percent while tuition went up 37 percent). Here I want to summarize the new legislation.

• Pell Grant Increase: Increases the Pell Grant over the next five years from $4,050 to $5,400; with an initial increase of $490 for this upcoming school year.

• Lender Subsidies: Takes over $20 billion dollars away from private lender subsidies and reasserts that money into increased student aid programs.

• Subsidized Stafford Loans: Reduces the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans by half, starting on July 1, (from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent) over four years; these loans to go students who demonstrate financial need.

• Loan Repayment and Forgiveness:
Starting July 1, 2009, borrowers would not have to devote more than 15 percent of their discretionary income to repaying Stafford student loans. After 25 years, all borrowers who are in this income-based repayment program will have any remaining balances forgiven.

• Teacher Tuition Assistance:
Undergraduate and graduate students who commit to teaching certain subjects, such as science and math, in low-income public schools for at least four years can receive up to $4,000 per year - for a total of $16,000 - in tuition assistance.

• Loan Forgiveness:
Borrowers who work in other public-sector jobs such as the military, law enforcement, firefighting, nursing, public defenders, librarians and early childhood teachers can have any balance on their student loans forgiven after 10 years of service and loan repayment.

This bill shows what can happen when progressives stand together and refuse to back down. May this strength be a harbinger of things to come.

Back to the Future

Rick Perlstein — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 18:11:41 -0400

This June I wrote about Chief Justice John Robert's nutjob ruling in the Parents Involved school desegregation case that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." In other words, his damned fool argument was that it was racist to try to figure out if a school districting plan was racist by counting how many people of ever race attended the schools in the district.

I lectured the Chief Justice that what he was doing meant that if racist school administrators decided to funnel black students into crappy schools in order to keep the good school lily white—rather a pattern in American educational history, that—the government would now be helpless to fight it.

Mr. Chief Justice said: not to fear. It was only "before Brown" that "schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on their color of their skin."

Read a newspaper, Mr. Chief Justice. Specifically, yesterday's New York Times. And consider what you've just wrought.