News

COHEAO Alert regarding the College Cost Reduction Act

The senior Democrats on the Senate HELP Committee and the House Education and Labor Committee have reached agreement on the "College Cost Reduction Act" (including that name for it), H.R. 2669 - the budget reconciliation bill of 2007. The final details are being worked out this afternoon based on Congressional Budget Office scoring. Members of the House-Senate Conference Committee were told to expect to see final legislation to sign by about 4 p.m. EDT September 5, 2007. As of 2 p.m., no one other than the Democratic Committee staff and the chairmen had apparently seen the final bill, so we don't have every last detail.

On Perkins Loans, they have apparently decided that they don't have enough money both to reauthorize the program and fund the FCC for the next five years. Therefore they are reauthorizing the program, which costs 450 million dollars to extend its life at least until 2015. That is because current law calls for the sending of Perkins funds to the government in 2012. Therefore the conferees thought the prudent thing to do was to continue the program. This also removes an issue that President Bush had threatened a Veto over.

The Conference Committee met today at 11 a.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. All members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, along with all members of the House Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education and Training of the Education and Labor Committee were appointed conferees, and almost all were there for the opening of the conference. (Notably absent were the three HELP Committee members who are running for president - Dodd, Clinton and Obama). The conference committee meeting proved to be nothing more than a series of short speeches by the senators and representatives, with no actual debate about the legislation. We will provide details about the debate in a later memo.

We are told that the final conference report will be brought to a vote in the Senate and possibly the House also by September 7, 2007. It is expected to pass, but it is impossible to know if it will pass by a veto-proof majority or not, nor do we know if the President will sign the measure. We believe it will make some of the changes demanded by President Bush, but not others.