BUDGET RECONCILIATION NEWS
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Democrats, Scaling Back Budget Bill, Press for Compromise by Week’s End
Senate Democrats said on Tuesday that they hoped to reach a compromise on President Biden’s sprawling domestic policy plan by the end of the week, toiling to show progress after weeks of public bickering and private negotiations with centrist holdouts. The renewed urgency came as Mr. Biden privately conceded that key elements of his social safety net and climate proposal were likely to be dropped or substantially pared back to fit in a measure that would be much smaller than the initial $3.5 trillion plan that Democrats had sketched out over the summer. In a meeting at the White House on Tuesday, the president reiterated that the overall price tag would be about $2 trillion and suggested that it could be as low as $1.75 trillion, said two people who were familiar with the discussion. They also cautioned that the details were still in flux. In recent days, Mr. Biden had previously proposed spending $1.9 trillion to $2.2 trillion over 10 years. ( The New York Times - Oct. 19, 2021)
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One Last Cut?
President Biden signaled last week that his plan for tuition-free community college is on life support in Congress, but policy experts say the program could still be salvaged —at least in part —while fitting into lower-cost legislation. All 50 Senate Democrats have to be on board to pass Biden’s big social spending plan —which also includes a boost to the maximum Pell Grant award, funding for minority-serving institutions and a college completion fund pilot program —via the budget reconciliation process. But moderate Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are firmly against the original legislation’s price tag, which came in at $3.5 trillion. Manchin previously said he would support a maximum of $1.5 trillion and has been encouraging his Democratic colleagues to cut down on the number of priorities included in the package. One of those cuts under consideration appears to be the America’s College Promise program, the part of the Build Back Better Act that would provide two years of universal tuition-free community college through a federal-state funding partnership. ( Inside Higher Ed - Oct. 20, 2021)
***See also, the following related news item:
- Democrats Agree to Drop Free Community College From Biden Plan - Bloomberg - Oct. 19, 2021
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Biden Plan Pits Hispanic-serving Colleges Against HBCUs
President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan is setting up a conflict between Hispanic-serving colleges and historically Black institutions—with both vying for the same resources to address inequities for underserved populations. HBCUs have built a collective brand, getting renewed presidential attention since the Trump administration and using their political clout to push Congress for money to upgrade aging campuses they say have long been underfunded by the federal government. Hispanic-serving institutions, which number more than five times as many across the U.S. as the approximately 100 HBCUs, say their institutions have also been overlooked. For Latino education groups, leveraging their growing representation is part of the politics. The head of the Education Department is Latino, and the latest census data has removed any doubt about the potential clout of the community. The way House Democrats wrote the multitrillion-dollar reconciliation measure—which would require minority-serving institutions to compete for billions of dollars —has also mobilized Latino higher education advocates. ( Politico - Oct. 20, 2021)
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Should the Next NIH Director Hold a Medical Degree?
As the search for the next director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) gears up, observers are wondering: Is it time for the White House to abandon tradition and choose a biomedical scientist who does not hold a medical degree? It’s been a topic of discussion since NIH Director Francis Collins announced on 5 October he will step down by the end of the year—and urged that a woman succeed him. The question may be especially relevant this time because insisting on a physician at the helm of NIH could complicate efforts to recruit a woman or a person of color (POC). Among potential candidates whose names quickly popped up was University of California, Berkeley, biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel Prize in 2020 for co-discovering the CRISPR gene-editing tool but does not hold an M.D. There is no legal requirement that the NIH director be a physician, but all 16 directors in the agency’s 134-year history have had a medical degree. Collins himself, an M.D. and geneticist with a chemistry Ph.D., has an active medical license. ( Science Magazine - Oct. 19, 2021)
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ACE, Higher Ed Groups Urge Flexibility for International Students as COVID-19 Travel Ban Is Lifted
International students and scholars and other foreign visitors who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 will be able to enter the country beginning Nov. 8, a White House spokesman said on Friday. The new policy was first announced in September without an implementation date or specific details in place. In January 2020, the Trump administration issued a policy banning foreign travelers from several countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the European Union, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, and India. President Biden kept the restrictions on travelers from the European Union, the UK, China, India, and several other countries, but provided a “national interest exemption” for those traveling here on F-1 student or J-1 scholarly visas for the start of the fall 2021 semester. ACE and other higher education associations are calling on the administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make the new policy flexible enough to accommodate students and scholars from countries where the vaccine is not widely available, so they can still enter the United States and then be vaccinated upon arrival. ( American Council on Education - Oct. 18, 2021)
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Education Dept. Releases Resource on Student Mental Health
The U.S. Department of Education released a new resource Tuesday for educators and practitioners on supporting students’ mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, including seven specific recommendations. The recommendations apply across education settings, though evidence on their impacts in higher education is still limited, the department noted. The resource comes following the release of a fact sheet last week in conjunction with the Department of Justice outlining the responsibility of institutions in meeting the mental health needs of their students. ( Inside Higher Ed - Oct. 20, 2021)
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