By Michael Dannenberg, Director of Strategic Initiatives for Policy, Education Reform Now
You can be sure the 2014 ‘election about nothing’ is going to have anything but nothing implications for national education policy. Below is my take for higher education.
(1) Watch for Appropriations riders. An effort to stop the Obama administration’s gainful employment regulation or perhaps more importantly an associated oversight taskforce from taking effect makes most sense for the new majority to pursue, because the regulation and policy are now final and an effort to stop both reflects the interests of Republican donors and Republican principles. The way for the new majority to pursue that agenda is to attach a “No funds provided under this Act may be used for . . .” to an Appropriations bill that funds the Department of Education.
Stopping work via an Appropriations rider on the Obama administration’s college ratings, teacher preparation reform, and other higher education accountability initiatives makes less sense, because there is nothing concrete that has been put forth by the Executive branch beyond speeches and reports. Plus the constituencies that don’t like those initiatives (colleges and AFT) are Democratic constituencies. Why would a Republican majority waste political capital on them? Congressional Republicans won’t want to set up a trade with the administration where gainful stays and college ratings and teacher preparation go. That’s not a Republican win. Follow the money.
(1A) Next year, Congressional Republicans are apt to pursue affirmative agenda items (as opposed to stopping the Obama administration from doing things) through the appropriations and debt ceiling process. They could pursue affirmative changes instead through what’s called “regular order” – the traditional legislative process – but filibuster threats and special interest influence on committees are likely to lead them through the Appropriations rider route once again. That’s not a good thing. Committees of jurisdiction are slower, but they’re also more apt to get the policy right.
(2) CBO, Joint Tax, and Senate Parliamentarian Office Leadership. Few appreciate the significance of it, but the Senate majority appoints the heads of these groups. They are very important in terms of the machinery of the legislative process when it comes to budget, entitlement program, and tax policy.
For example, in 2001, Senate Parliamentarian Bob Dove infuriated Democrats in ruling that the budget reconciliation process, which is supposed to be for deficit reduction purposes only, also could be used to advance the Bush tax cut. A different call would’ve preserved Democrats’ right to filibuster and probably profoundly changed history. (By the way, a few months later, Dove made a call the Republican majority didn’t like keeping $5 billion out of a reconciliation bill. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott fired him in response and got future rulings with which he was more comfortable.)
Watch for at some point a new Congressional Budget Office leader who embraces ‘dynamic’ scoring of tax proposals, ‘market-based’ or what some Republican advocates call, ‘fair value’ scoring of the student loan program (back to the FFEL / Direct Loan war), and other accounting changes that could affect a host of fiscal and social welfare policy areas.
(3) Dust off your ‘Stop the Raid on Student Aid’ buttons. Particularly vulnerable is the near $5 billion a year in-school interest subsidy. It’s an entitlement stream that Senator Alexander already has targeted. Maybe there is an effort to drive its funding into the Pell Grant program (vouchers); maybe it goes for deficit reduction; maybe a combination; or maybe, just maybe it’s part of a bigger deal with the administration and forward leaning Democrats for a state-federal partnership in support of college affordability.
What might that state-federal partnership look like? Well, take a look at the Obama administration’s past state-federal grant proposals, the Beyond Pell proposal put out by a Gates Foundation funded consortium of Young Invincibles, the New America Foundation, and Education Trust (disclosure I contributed, but am prouder of Education Trust’s also relevant Doing Away With Debt proposal), or the latest from the Center for American Progress and separate proposal by American Association of State Colleges and Universities.
Finally, a Few Bonus Predictions:
* Agreement with the Administration on opening up Title IV funding to more providers; and
* Agreement with the administration on a streamlined financial aid application, if not full application process.
Now, how do Hillary Clinton and presumably Jeb Bush fit into all of this? Well, that’s a much more complicated future blog post requiring a three-dimensional chessboard to follow. Welcome to the new political paradigm.