Legislation

HUGE Boost For Students On the Way?

Armand Biroonak — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:21:21 -0400

Debt saddled students may finally get the help they need to pay for college. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act – if passed by Congress – provides the largest post-secondary reinvestment in decades. Following the commitment outlined by Obama earlier this year, Congress is now taking the lead, showing that quality, affordable college education is critical to move the country forward.

Below is the boost to student aid outlined by the legislation:

• Investing $40 billion to increase the maximum annual Pell Grant scholarship to $5,550 in 2010 and to $6,900 by 2019. Starting in 2010, the scholarship will be linked to match rising costs-of-living by indexing it to the Consumer Price Index plus 1 percent;

• Investing $3 billion to bolster college access and completion support programs for students;

• Strengthening the Perkins Loan program, a campus-based program that provides low-cost federal loans to students;

• Keeping interest rates low on need-based – or subsidized – federal student loans by making the interest rates on these loans variable beginning in 2012. These interest rates are currently set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in 2012;

• Making it easier for families to apply for financial aid by simplifying the FAFSA form;

Additionally, the bill invests $10 billion in community colleges, off the heels of Obama’s recently announced American Graduation Initiative that looks to add 5 million more graduates over the next decade.
This is a significant step, recognizing community colleges as an integral part to post-secondary education.

But the most transformational provision is an end to the billions in subsidies received by private lenders under the Federal Family Education Loan Program. By redirecting these loans to the government’s Direct Loan Program, the move will save nearly $90 billion over ten years, while freeing resources to reinvest in the student aid initiatives mentioned above.

Why This Bill is Needed Now

College affordability and completion rates have become absolutely abysmal in America. Just take a look at these disturbing trends:

Historically Pell Grants covered 77 percent of total college costs. Now it’s down to a third.
49 states receive a grade of F (failing) on college affordability.
1.7 million to 3.2 million students over the next decade will NOT choose college because of costs.
Nearly half of all students attending a two-year institution drop out; one-in-five students pursuing a bachelor’s degree never finish.
The U.S. once ranked first in college attainment, today we rank nearly last among OECD countries.

Let’s Get This Passed

Of course the bill has its opponents, with some members of Congress siding with banks to kill the move to Direct Lending (read: preserve bank subsidies). Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) explained his opposition to the bill, “What [Obama’s] doing is taking over the student loan program and depriving individuals — 15 million students — of their choices of many different kinds of student loans.”

BUT ,we know the current system is broken and has failed us. Too many students either avoid college due to costs or graduate with mountains of debt. That is why the passage of this bill is so important. By ending bank subsidies, greatly expanding student aid, and investing in our community colleges, we can ensure that the doors to college remain open to all for years to come.

Tell Congress to put Students before Banks, and pass this legislation HERE.

Defense Reform Bill Marred by Lobbyists

Armand Biroonak — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:52:57 -0400

The Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act sponsored by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) was intended to improve the Pentagon’s acquisition process, fraught with nearly $300 billion in cost overruns on 95 major weapons systems. By establishing an independent overseer, improving organization and strengthening accountability to manage costs, this legislation was the first (refreshing) sign of defense reform. Yet, the latest efforts by the defense lobby have weakened the bill significantly.

Although the bill will not reach the Senate floor until next week, hints of a watered-down version are reported by Congressional Quarterly. According to CQ:

“The committee changed a provision that would establish a director for independent cost analysis, limiting his role to programs managed by the Office of the Secretary of Defense and excluding those managed by the military services, cutting his portfolio by about half. Also, under the bill, his estimates would not be verified by outside groups.”

With the remainder of oversight in the hands of the Pentagon, the chances of improving the acquisitions process are slim. For years the GAO has made recommendations to DOD, producing little success. Research and development costs have increased 40 percent from initial estimates, with average schedule delays of close to two years.

“The committee expanded the Pentagon’s ability to bypass a new requirement that programs include competitive prototyping. The original version allowed a waiver for “national security” considerations, but the committee added the option of a waiver if the cost of competitive prototyping is too high.”

Besides avoiding complete competition, the Pentagon’s ability to grant exemptions to programs will not control costs. Take the Missile Defense system—it was exempted from standard baselines and traditional oversight to allow for flexibility in development. What occurred were delays and skyrocketing costs at $10 billion annually, with nearly every missile system failing in testing. Furthermore, the language of what constitutes an exemption is so vague, there is a risk that it is applied to numerous programs.

And there is more:

“A third provision altered by the committee would change the bill’s ban on one company providing “systems engineering and technical assistance” for a weapons program while also being involved in the development or production of that weapon, a potential conflict of interest.”

This is a root cause of the failed acquisition process, contractors too often have a hand in every part of a program’s production, knowing that 1) in the absence of strict oversight, there is more incentive to continue program development than meeting cost and delivery targets; 2) lax testing and performance measures allow for even failed products to move forward from development to production.

The Acquisitions Reform Act will not solve every problem, but does lay the groundwork for institutional change in the future—but not in the bill’s current form. The defense lobby has been ready for this fight against reform, and if they get their way, the current system of astronomical waste and inefficiency will surely continue. The bill should be on the floor of the Senate by next week at the earliest, whether amendments are added to strengthen the bill remain to be seen.

CQ article by Josh Rogin, "Amendments May Delay Acquisitions Overhaul," 22 Apr. 2009.

Read my blog about the failures of Pentagon reform here.

GRANTING EMPLOYEES THE RIGHT TO WALK AWAY: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?

Dmitri Iglitzin — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:37:37 -0500

People who live near Niagara Falls are said to become so used to the sound of roaring water that they literally don’t even hear it. A similar phenomenon appears to have taken place regarding one little-known facet of the American workplace, so-called “captive audience meetings,” where employees are forced to listen to their employer’s anti-union speech.

Frito-Lay, Inc., the world’s largest producer of salty snack foods, is one of the country’s leading practitioners of this art. It routinely not only compels its employees to listen to anti-union diatribes, on company time and property, but also forces its driver-employees to allow company employees (and other people, specifically chosen for their skill in advocating the company’s anti-union position) to accompany them on their routes as uninvited “guests,” thereby forcing the drivers to listen to this carefully crafted anti-union speech.

Frito-Lay sugarcoats what it is doing, of course. In an August 6, 2007, letter to several hundred Teamster-represented employees in Washington State, for example, informing them of its impending effort to oust the union, the company wrote, “We will probably use several methods of communication over the next few weeks, including employee meetings, letters, route rides, and individual discussions.” Left unstated, but none-the-less crystal clear, was the fact that these communications would not be voluntary on their part. To the contrary, any refusal by an employee to allow the company to communicate its message to him or her -- wherever, whenever, and for however long the company wished -- would be grounds for discharge.

Nor is this kind of behavior unique to Frito-Lay. A report for the federal government, based on a study of more than 400 union representation election campaigns, found that during 92 percent of union organizing drives, employers forced their employees to attend closed door anti-union meetings. In addition, 78 percent of employers directed supervisors to deliver anti-union messages to employees in one-on-one meetings. On average, employers held 11 captive audience meetings during every union organizing campaign.

Surprisingly, nothing in federal labor law, or any other federal law, prohibits this type of compulsion, or permits (for example) an employee to leave a meeting that has been held for the sole purpose of indoctrinating him or her in the employer’s anti-union credo.

Over the last few years, however, the AFL-CIO has initiated a nationwide campaign to have individual states fill that gap. A proposed state law, often entitled the “Worker Freedom Act” (WFA), would make it illegal for an employer to require workers to sit through meetings while the employer lectures on religious or political beliefs, including beliefs about joining a union. This law would not prohibit employers from sharing their opinions with their employees. It would, however, grant the employees the right to walk away.

Although legislation consistent with the WFA has been introduced into numerous state legislatures, it clearly has a long way to go before it achieves general acceptance. Yet, the Michigan, New Hampshire and Oregon houses of representatives have all passed the bill (Michigan most recently, on July 18, 2007), and it was passed by the Colorado legislature in 2006, before being vetoed by the governor. On February 3, 2009, committees of both houses of Washington State’s Legislature held hearings on the bill. Clearly, a lot of folks believe, as the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas put it in 1974, that while a person “has a right to express his views to those who wish to listen, he has no right to force his message upon an audience incapable of declining to receive it.”

They say that when the people who live near Niagara Falls go away for a weekend, they’re shocked, upon their return, at just how noisy is the din. The current momentum boiling up for the WFA suggests that when voters and legislators stop to think about captive audience meetings, the intrinsic vulnerability of employees at the workplace, and the WFA, they’ll recognize that workers are routinely denied something that the rest of us take for granted, and support this law to give employees the “right to walk away” long denied them under federal law.

Conservatives Kill Renewable Energy Bill

Alexander Sewell — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Conservatives killed 2007 legislation that would have required 15 percent of our electricity to come from renewable sources and they continue to block the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2008.