Washington Highlights: September 3, 2004
Congress Returns to Washington
To Face FY 2005 Spending Bills
Contents
Prior Issues
 |
Congress returns to Washington Sept. 7 to confront
the formidable task of completing the annual appropriations bills
prior to the Oct. 1 start of the federal fiscal year. While the
House has made significant progress toward completing the FY 2005
spending bills - approving 10 of the 13 bills prior to the August
recess - Senate action on the bills has been slowed by the Senate's
inability to approve the conference agreement on the FY 2005 budget
resolution (S. Con. Res. 95 - H.
Rept. 108-498). GOP leaders finally attached an $821.4 billion
discretionary spending cap to the defense appropriations bill, which
the President signed on Aug. 5 (P.L.
108-287). This allows Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to set spending allocations for each of the
appropriations subcommittees and enforce these limits with budget
points of order when the spending bills come to the Senate floor.
Just exactly what the Senate will do is still unclear. Republican
leaders reportedly are considering using the homeland security spending
bill - legislation that many observers believe Congress must pass
prior to adjourning in early October - as a vehicle for an omnibus
appropriations package that would combine most or perhaps all of
the unfinished spending bills. That strategy would force Democrats
to choose between supporting the package or being seen as delaying
passage of needed homeland security funds.
Another question is the whether an omnibus spending bill would
include the three bills that have not yet received final approval
in the House: Labor-HHS-Education, VA-HUD-Independent Agencies,
and Transportation-Treasury. It is rumored that the Labor-HHS bill,
which the Appropriations Committee approved July 14, will go to
the House Rules Committee Sept. 7, which would set the stage for
consideration on the House floor later in the week. However, this
schedule is subject to change at any time.
Information:
Dave Moore, Senior Associate Vice President
AAMC Government Relations
dbmoore@aamc.org
(202) 828-0525
New GAO Report Looks at Costs of Student Loan
Consolidation
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) Aug. 23 released a report
(GAO-04-843) that concludes that the Department of Education should
consider the type of school a consolidation borrower attended in
developing risk categories for the department's budgetary cost estimates.
The report, "Student Loan Consolidation: Further Analysis Could
Lead to Enhanced Default Assumptions for Budgetary Cost Estimates"
notes that borrowers who had defaulted on loans prior to consolidation
were more likely to default on their consolidation loans that those
who did not default before consolidation, and that defaulted loans
from either program were more likely to be consolidated in the William
D. Ford Direct Loan Program (FDLP) than the Federal Family Education
Loan Program (FFELP) - likely due to the less stringent requirements
in the FDLP to consolidate defaulted loans.
The GAO also found that "FFELP borrowers were less likely than
FDLP consolidation borrowers to have attended a proprietary school
prior to consolidation and were more likely to have borrowed while
attending graduate school." The GAO analysis indicates that
"the extent to which borrowers redefault on consolidation loans
varies according to the type of school they attended" and that
the department's "cost estimates may be excluding important
risk factors associated with specific school types," leading
to the recommendation that the type of school a consolidation borrower
attended should be included in the Department's budgetary cost estimates.
Information:
Jonathan Fishburn, Director, Research, Education and Veterans' Legislative Affairs
AAMC Office of Governmental Relations
jfishburn@aamc.org
(202) 828-0525
Application Cycle for NIH Loan Repayment Opens
The application cycle for the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) loan repayment programs will be open
from Sept. 1 through Dec. 15. The NIH loan repayment programs offer
health professionals conducting qualified research up to $35,000
per year to repay educational debt. The programs also include payment
for the state and federal tax liabilities associated with the loan
repayment funds. Individuals interested in applying must be US citizens
or permanent residents, possess a doctorate-level degree, devote
at least 50 percent of their time to research funded by a non-profit
or government entity, and have educational debt equal to or greater
than 20 percent of their institutional salary. The NIH administers
loan repayment programs in five areas: clinical research, clinical
research for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds, contraception
and infertility research, health disparities, and pediatric research.
|
