Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my amendment that would cut funding for the student financial assistance account by $9.25 billion.
The student financial assistance account is being funded at $22 billion for fiscal year 2024. This account provides funding for grants, loans, and other financial assistance to students who choose to pursue higher education, but the Federal Government's subsidization of higher education costs for individuals has actually created perverse incentives for higher education institutions to raise prices for all students and prospective students.
This is a spiral and cycle that has been going on for decades. A 2017 study from the Federal Reserve found the average tuition increase associated with expansion of student loans is as much as 60 cents per dollar.
Federal student loan subsidies don't help students with the cost of higher education. These subsidies actually result in increased costs for higher education, tuition, fees, and expenses.
With the Federal Government bearing the brunt of student loans, colleges are guaranteed to get the funding they ask for at the expense of the American taxpayer. This is a cycle that only leads to higher spending each fiscal year.
Cutting funding for this program would claw back billions that could be diverted to lowering the national debt and the financial burden on the taxpayer.
The Federal Government should not have a place in the monetary affairs of its private citizens. That is a matter for private banks, colleges, and students.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, as it stands today, Americans owe over $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, more than 5 percent of the Nation's total $33 trillion debt.
The annual cost of attendance for students living on campus at a public 4-year State institution is 26 grand, or over $104,000 for a 4- year degree. Out-of-State students pay $27,000, or over $108,000. Private nonprofit university students pay 55 grand, or more than $225,000.
Do you know what is a new low? Do you know what is cruel? Do you know what is unconscionable? It is sending kids out with worthless degrees with debt that they can never sustain.
It is a new low to oppose something like this because you know what is driving this? It is the exponential growth of children and kids who are coming up who cannot afford education because your grants, your continued giving of taxpayer funding to the universities has actually increased the number of people who have to get assistance.
Why? Because tuition has spiked. It is growing multiples of the inflation rate. That is what is cruel. That is what is unconscionable.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, what is driving the increased costs of tuition? Well, most of that is because the bureaucratization of academia. That drives costs higher every year.
Let's go back to that 2017 study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The average tuition increase associated with expansion of student loans is 60 cents for every dollar. So when your tuition is going up a buck, 60 cents of it is because of expansion of student loan programs.
The Biden administration's efforts to eliminate student loan debt is wrong--wrong because they force everyday Americans to pay for the student loans taken out by others and wrong because they doubled down on a failed public policy that incentivizes price increases. You incentivize tuition to go up. Why would a university ever reduce its tuition or its costs? They know that they have the Federal Government to backstop every student who wants to go in.
The way to curb the rise in both college tuition and student debt is to get the Federal Government out of the student loan business. The result will bring about more fiscally responsible citizens and a more fiscally responsible Federal Government. This would make the loan market more responsible and cause colleges to rein in their costs and reduce tuition so fewer students would need Pell grants or private aid.
Private lending would also limit taxpayers' exposure to billions of dollars in student loan defaults. Did I say billions? I meant to say trillions because that is where we sit.
Now, I want to respond in the time I have left to the cynical statement by the previous speaker who was talking about aid to Israel. We passed aid to Israel by a 226-196 vote. How did that happen? Mr. Chair, 196 of my friends across the aisle did not want to provide aid to Israel in that circumstance.
Mr. Chair, I urge people to adopt this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I rise to speak in support of my amendment that would strike funding for the Student Aid Administration.
The Student Aid Administration provides funding for the government to administer student financial assistance programs, including funding for the office responsible for ensuring accountability for higher education institutions who receive Federal dollars.
Unfortunately, under this administration, this regime, the Department of Education has developed a pattern of attacking large, higher education institutions that have a religious affiliation.
I will give you two of these today.
The Department of Education has repeatedly gone after Grand Canyon University, the largest private Christian university in the country. The Department of Education levied a $37.7 million fine. This is the largest fine in the Department's history.
GCU was a nonprofit from its inception in 1949 until 2004 when they partnered with private investors in order to avoid closing.
In 2018, GCU returned to its nonprofit status and is recognized by the IRS, the Higher Learning Commission, the State of Arizona, Arizona Private Postsecondary Board, and the NCAA. However, despite all this, the Department of Education has refused to acknowledge GCU's nonprofit status for purposes of Federal student financial aid.
By not acknowledging GCU's nonprofit status, the Department of Education is able to target GCU and others as ``bad actors due to the disproportionate number of Americans who attend those schools and then default on Federal student loans.''
However, GCU provides much higher levels of transparency than are legally required, and it is considered a leader in education transparency. The Department of Education, for instance, only requires universities to provide cost estimates for the first year in college-- for first-year, first-time students, and only for undergraduate programs, but GCU goes beyond these requirements by providing cost estimates for each year of the program study and for all of its degree programs, including the doctoral level.
Rather than apply what GCU has done, the Department has attacked them, making this fine all the more troubling. The Department of Education is trying to make the claim that GCU lied to students about the cost to attend doctorate programs, but that is inaccurate.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, GCU's degree program calculator provides the total estimated cost for a 60-credit doctoral program the exact same way it does for other degree programs. That is not required under the Department of Education, but the Department of Education still goes after them.
GCU in its effort for clear transparency in red print above the calculator makes clear both the average number of continuation courses and cost for continuation courses that students may need to complete a doctoral dissertation.
The Department of Ed even acknowledges that GCU provides this disclosure, but nonetheless, continues to go after them. GCU graduates are incurring less debt than the national average due to its affordable tuition rates, and still, the Department of Ed goes after them.
A GAO report found that 91 percent of American colleges have misleading information in their financial aid offers, but GCU is the only nonprofit university being attacked from the Department of Education.
At the same time, Liberty University is being threatened with a similar $37 million fine by the Department of Education, alleging Clery Act violations based on a preliminary report in May of this year.
Liberty University has fully cooperated with the Department's investigation and found the Department made significant errors, misstatements, and unsupported conclusions in their findings.
Why is Liberty University getting threatened with what would be another $37 million fine from the Department of Education when they are fully cooperating?
These two big universities are two of the largest Christian universities in America. Is that why they are being attacked by this Department of Education? It certainly seems to be the case.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I ask my friends: Do you support a tax on private Christian universities by the Department of Education, the very Department that I am trying to defund?
When you talk about the American Dream, student loan debt is crushing graduates, which is why when you look at polling, it indicates very clearly that young graduates do not believe they will attain the American Dream that their parents had access to. They are coming out with crushing student debt at the same time that that same Department is trying to crush very fine universities.
Mr. Chair, I urge adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Will the gentlewoman yield?
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, I am going to respond to the ``scurrilous'' comments made in the last statement. Nothing in my amendment addressed online, for-profit private colleges, postsecondary. That was a deliberate mischaracterization of what I said, because the two universities I talked about are both nonprofit universities, recognized as postsecondary education institutions.
GCU is recognized by the IRS as nonprofit, Higher Learning Commission, State of Arizona, and the Arizona Private Postsecondary Board. Liberty University is equal in their classification.
To say what was said for 2\1/2\ minutes, to actually misdirect and try to misattribute my purpose, was an ascribing of motivations which should have been taken down.
Mr. Chair, I rise now to speak in support of my amendment, which would strike funding for the higher education account. It appropriates over $2.7 billion. This account provides appropriations for grant programs that provide direct taxpayer support to higher education institutions.
The effect of government subsidy and control has been more damaging than anyone has yet realized. Coupled with student assistance programs, direct government assistance to institutions has led to increased education costs and administrative costs.
Let's think of it. College costs are out of control. Harvard, the total cost of attending for 4 years is now around $300 grand. College costs have risen to this level because D.C. is heavily subsidizing tuition through Federal grants and loans, leaving colleges and universities free to increase their prices because they know the Federal Government is going to pick up the tab in between.
In FY 2023, we enacted a level of $2.994 billion, $600 million more than fiscal year 2019.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, it is a shame that people make aspersions on the floor when they don't know anything about a subject.
I think of Grand Canyon University and the 35,000 students on campus, on a physical plant, in Phoenix, Arizona. I just heard that they are an online school. Go tell those people who commute or live in the dorms at one of the fastest growing physical plant campuses in the country.
It is like saying the University of Arizona is an online school, with their 35,000 students, because they have an online program where you can get a bachelor's degree without ever setting foot on campus, or ASU or BYU, or any of the hundreds of other campuses.
How can you misdirect and try to attack an amendment when you simply don't know what is going on with what you are saying? It is astounding. It is astounding.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, nobody wants to revoke postsecondary education. What we want to do is acknowledge what the Federal Government has done to distort the cost of education.
The New York Fed itself has said it is eating it up, and 60 percent of every tuition increase is coming because of this aid. We want to get it down so it is affordable again. We want nobody leaving college crushed by the student debt that they have. That is what is going on here.
The fiscal year 2023 enacted level was $3 billion. That is $600 million more than just a few years before in 2019. The 2024 number is slightly less, but it doesn't do enough to cut spending when we are $35.5 trillion in debt.
Let's talk about what is happening. Universities are discriminating against conservative-leaning students. We see that. We had a hearing on that just last week. A recent University of North Carolina study found that conservative students within the UNC system face distinctive challenges when it comes to free speech and expression.
Nearly 68 percent of conservative students are at least slightly concerned about possible social consequences that may come from voicing one's true opinion in class. It is a massive problem that higher education fosters.
It is time that we move the Federal Government out of this business because they don't have any constitutional authority to be there in the first place.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chairman, I rise to speak in support of my amendment, which strikes funding for the Institute of Education Sciences.
The current funding in the fiscal year 2024 bill is $707 million. The institute puts this funding toward programs such as governing boards of institutions of higher education, which is interested in the disclosure of gender, racial, and ethnic composition of governing boards of higher education to promote DEI institutions, which is a pointless use of information and resources.
This institute puts funding toward programs such as cross-sectional studies. This is a program launched to provide real-time data about the impact of COVID-19 on public K-12 education. The content focuses on how COVID-19 is affecting the delivery of education and how schools are navigating recovery efforts from that epidemic.
The Department of Education requested $4 million initially to further expand the survey across districts nationally. It is not a mission that the American taxpayer needs to fund, and it is a direct waste of our budget.
It is offices such as this that contribute to the rapid wasteful spending that has become so commonplace in our country under our Federal Government.
As far as the grant programs under the Institute of Education Sciences, they go toward post-COVID-19 research. This is research to accelerate pandemic recovery in special education grant programs and improve pandemic recovery efforts in education agencies' grant programs.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, under the Institute of Education Sciences, they will establish two research networks, the pre-kindergarten through grade 12 recovery research network and the community college recovery research network to study pandemic events. It is a grant that pertains to gender-integrated classrooms to see if boys and girls are better equipped to learn together or separately in the classroom.
The fiscal year 2019 enacted level was over $615 million, but 2024 is currently set at over $707 million. That is a $90 million increase in just 5 years. This rate of growth is not sustainable.
This program is part of what we could safely call the educational- industrial complex. Over the years, our predecessors created a constituency and expanded on it every year by giving more money. They justify it by putting more mandates and doing more studies that don't mean anything. They come back and do it again and again.
Thus, we are well over $33 trillion in national debt. Our structural deficit last year was over $2 trillion. Fiscal year 2024 looks like it is going to be about the same, except we are going to be north of $35 trillion, $36 trillion in national debt. That is crushing.
Mr. Chair, I take my colleagues back to the New York Fed and its study. Of every dollar of tuition that increased, 60 percent of that, 60 cents of that, goes to the fact that the Federal Government is meddling in postsecondary education. That is what is happening here. That is the educational-industrial complex.
In December 2020, the Trump administration nominated Steve Hanke and John Yoo, both professors, to the advisory board for the IES. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona refused to acknowledge the appointments, deliver their credentials, or facilitate statutorily required board meetings.
That is the educational-industrial complex that we are facing today. It is crushing. It is crushing our students who want an education.
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Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Chair, the greatest strength of this body is that we represent constituents who send us here knowing that we are constrained in protecting their rights because we are limited by what we can and cannot do by that great document, the Constitution.
I stand here willing to learn and find out where in the Constitution there is any specific authority for this body to meddle in postsecondary educational choices of the American people. That is the educational-industrial complex at work, for what we are seeing in the arguments against my amendments today.
I support postsecondary education. I do not support the Federal Government meddling in the choices of individuals to get that education and how they are going to get it and the institutions that are providing it--the harassment that some of those institutions are receiving from this administration.
Mr. Chair, I urge the adoption of my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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