NEA: Higher Education Advocate OnLine

Carrying NEA's Message to 'the Hill'

Higher Education on the Congressional Front-Burner

NEA's higher education lobbying team faces a daunting task as the 105th Congress wends its way through a number of bills that promise to reshape higher education for many years to come.

Leading off the list of items Congress is wrestling with is how to implement President Clinton's promise to make the first two years of college as universal as high school. Also pending: a spate of Republican bills on higher education finance.

Tucked away in the tax plans under consideration, meanwhile, is a proposal that might lead to lower pensions for higher education members of TIAA-CREF.

Another proposal buried in pending tax legislation would tax currently tax-exempt tuition waivers for grad students and some college employees.

Congress has, in addition, also created an ominous-sounding National Cost of Higher Education Commission. And looming over everything is the debate over the reauthorization of the 1965 Higher Education Act, the most important federal legislation that impacts colleges and universities.

How does NEA get member voices heard on these important issues?

"We work in a bipartisan way to influence members of Congress, not only to increase funding but to strengthen all higher education programs,"explains Isabelle Garcia, NEA's chief lobbyist on higher education issues.

"Many members of Congress--and certainly their staffs--know that we have a substantial number of higher education members and that we have important and unique perspectives to offer on higher education," notes Garcia.

These unique perspectives come from NEA members, men and women directly involved in helping students learn.

"Our job," adds Garcia, "is to implement the legislative program that's adopted by the NEA Representative Assembly each year."

NEA members in higher education help shape this program in a number of ways. A higher education member--Jim Wilson from Brevard Community College in Florida--currently serves on the NEA Legislative Committee, which holds hearings open to all NEA members at each of the six NEA regional conferences held each year and at the annual Higher Education Conference.

Last January, Garcia arranged a meeting for NEA higher ed leaders and key senior House and Senate Education committee staff to discuss the upcoming Higher Education Act reauthorization. In April, she put a group of NEA higher ed leaders together with Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education David Longanecker to acquaint him with NEA member views.

At the beginning of each session of Congress, NEA Government Relations staff assess the climate in Congress and set specific work priorities. Once these are set, Garcia spends her time meeting with the staffs of those senators and representatives who have influence on the committees dealing with higher education.

Garçia and her colleagues then keep track of higher ed issues in the different committees, cover relevant hearings, meet with committee staff, and provide testimony to key members of Congress that outline NEA's positions.

NEA, Garcia points out, also works in coalition with other higher ed groups.

| return to August 1997 Advocate |