GRC Updates - AACS Member Call to Action Coming Soon
The vote in the Senate was 78-20. The vote in the House was 277-151. In both instances, the no votes were cast by conservative Republicans who remain focused on preventing potential increases in federal spending under the budget caps and/or are seeking the inclusion of specific riders in the annual appropriations bills.
Congressional leaders, along with the White House, now have ten weeks to resolve the budget impasse and finalize the FY2016 budget. This will not be easy to do, given the differences between the parties on spending levels, funding for Planned Parenthood, and a host of other issues (e.g. before the end of the year Congress must also raise the debt ceiling, pass a highway bill, and pass legislation extending a number of expiring tax provisions).
There are two schools of thought about how the resignation of the Speaker will impact the legislative process over the next two months. One side is hoping that new House leadership will be able to reach out to all factions of House Republicans, come up with a unified strategy and get the legislation done. The other side believes that Speaker Boehner's resignation will have little impact and that the factions within the Republican party will remain at each other's throats. In either case, the man in the middle will be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He will be working hard to get all the legislation through the Senate leaving the House to accept the results even if it requires the help of the Democratic Members for passage of the bills.
The future of these deliberations are important to AACS member students and schools, because, among other riders being considered are the House and Senate Labor, HHS, and Education proposals to prevent implementation of the Gainful Employment and State Authorization regulations. Thanks to your efforts in response to the introduction of H.R. 970 and S. 559 – The Supporting Academic Freedom Through Regulatory Relief Act, and AACS highly successful "Call to Action" in April and May. Leaders of the Education Committees convinced the Appropriators to add specific language calling for the prohibition on the use of federal funds to implement the regulations.
The more preferable Senate language would prohibit the U.S. Department of Education from implementing the 2012 GE regulations and 2010 State Authorization, and Credit Hour regulations until two years after the next reauthorization of the Higher Education Act – giving the authorizing committee time to address the issue before any regulations are implemented, while the less preferable, but still desirable House language would simply prevent the Department from implementing the provision throughout the current fiscal year which began today (October 1, 2015 – September 30, 2016).
AACS remains focused and committed to the pursuit of any and all options which will seek to prevent the Department's continued efforts to rush toward implementation of this complicated, ill-conceived, and highly problematic regulation and will be calling upon you very soon with another series of Calls to Action to maintain and sustain our efforts to prevent implementation in the short-term (through the appropriations process) and permanently restrict the Department from using the debt-to-earnings metrics as a means of assessing academic quality over the long-term (through provisions included in the 2016 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act).
Please stay on the lookout for Calls to Action likely to follow later this week on GE and re-instatement of ability-to-benefit student eligibility! More very soon...