Education Standing Committee

March 12, 2008

Congress Eyes Seizure of State Appropriations Authority!

COOPTING STATE APPROPRIATIONS AUTHORITY, IMPOSING MORE FEDERAL SANCTIONS, UNDERMINING TUITION ASSISTANCE FOR LOW-INCOME STUDENTS---these are the three intended and indirect consequences of pending federal legislation

(H.R. 4137) now informally being conferenced.

Call, meet with or write your congressional delegation and urge them to support removal of Section 108 of H.R. 4137 (College Opportunity & Affordability Act of 2007). Congress is in recess March 14-31 so your delegations are likely to be in their districts and home states.

Section 108 would punish states for not maintaining or increasing higher education appropriations.

Section 108 violates all principles of federalism and would place the federal government in charge of determining when state legislatures and governors have adequately funded higher education.

Section 108 could have the opposite effect of its intended purpose and reduce state higher education appropriations.

Section 108 wrongly punishes low-income students by taking Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP) money away from states who do not maintain higher ed appropriations in tough budget years.

The MOE in Section 108 could actually have the opposite effect of its intended purpose and reduce state appropriations for higher education, while putting the federal government on the shaky path of advancing federal price controls to hold tuition costs in check. Failure to meet the federal government’s “funding standard” would prove costly—to states and low-income students who would lose federal matching grants as part of the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships (LEAP) based on some bureaucratic determination made in Washington, D.C. But perhaps the greatest irony is that the MOE set out in Section 108 and existing federal MOEs do not compel Congress itself to fund the grossly underfunded federal mandates in IDEA (between $12 billion and $30 billion per year) or No Child Left Behind (also in the tens of billions of dollars each year).

Postsecondary tuition rates are determined through a complex interplay of individual state and regional economic factors. By ignoring this complexity and assuming uniformity, Section 108 would establish a perverse and unnecessary component to the policymaking process. Section 108 should be struck and we seek your support in eliminating this section during conference.

For additional assistance and information, please contact David Shreve (202-624-8187; david.shreve@ncsl.org) or Robert Strange (202-624-8698; robert.strange@ncsl.org) in NCSL’s Washington, D.C. office.

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