Here's Where Betsy DeVos Can 'Start Fresh' With Higher Education - MARY CLARE REIM/HERITAGE FOUNDATION

(Reuters photo)

Here's Where Betsy DeVos Can 'Start Fresh' With Higher Education

6:00AM EDT 5/15/2017 MARY CLARE REIM/HERITAGE FOUNDATION

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos stated during a speech in Salt Lake City on Tuesday that instead of reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, lawmakers should consider a "fresh start."

Yes, Congress should consider alternatives to the Higher Education Act, which authorizes all federal higher education spending such as student loans and grants.

Enacted in 1965 under President Lyndon Johnson, the Higher Education Act has undergone countless amendments that pass problems on to future generations. As the secretary said, "Why wouldn't we start afresh and talk about what we need in this century and beyond for educating and helping our young people learn?"

Indeed, higher education badly needs to be adapted to the changing requirements of the American workforce. Here are just a few ways that Congress can give the higher education sector the fresh start it so badly needs.

Decouple Federal Financing From Accreditation

The federal government's control over our accreditation system is not a particularly popular topic, but it has dramatic consequences on the ability of American universities to thrive and innovate.

The federal government currently has sole discretion in the recognition of accreditors, who then serve as gatekeepers of federal student aid and other institutional financing. This solidifies the federal government's ability to determine which education is worthy of accreditation and which is not. Unfortunately, this de facto federal system of accreditation has limited the ability of the higher education sector to grow and adapt to the changing needs of our workforce and the economy.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., have put forward the Higher Education Reform and Opportunity Act (HERO), which would allow states to opt out of the current federal accrediting structure.

States could recognize their own accreditors, including members of the business community. The legislation would also allow states to break apart the current binary accrediting model, and let the business community, trade groups, nonprofits, and other entities to put their stamp of approval on individually credentialed courses or curricula.

These reforms would give students a better idea of the market value of the education they are receiving, grant more flexibility with student loan dollars, and create a pipeline between the universities and the job market.

Consolidate Federal Lending

Under the Obama administration, the federal government dramatically increased its role in originating and servicing student loans. The near-monopoly that the federal government now has over the student loan market presents many problems, the most pressing of which is mounting evidence suggesting federal aid leads to increases in college tuition.

As my colleague Jamie Hall and I discuss in our recent report, the five current federal loan programs should be collapsed into a single loan option under the current terms of the Graduate Stafford Loan. Additionally, Congress should place an annual and lifetime cap on student lending, thereby restoring fiscal responsibility to the loan program. We anticipate such reforms would lead to savings of $33 billion over the next 10 years.

Remove Burdensome Regulations

Under the Obama administration, several burdensome regulations were placed on institutions of higher education, particularly those in the for-profit sector.

Regulations should at the very least be sector neutral in their application, but a better approach would be to remove these barriers to innovation altogether.

Borrower defense to repayment, for example, opens institutions up to being sued by students who feel they have been defrauded by their university (a potentially slippery slope in the future). While longstanding institutions with large endowments may be better insulated from this regulation, new actors who are trying to build their business will have trouble coming up with the line of credit required to protect against such suits.

This is just one example of the many ways that burdensome regulations drain resources from universities and distract from the business of educating students.

In considering the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, policymakers should follow DeVos' advice and develop new policy proposals that will help improve the quality of higher education while putting downward pressure on prices. These reforms would be a significant step in achieving that goal.

Mary Clare Reim is a policy analyst in education policy at The Heritage Foundation.

This article was originally published at DailySignal.com. Used with permission.

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President Obama Threatens to Veto Defense Bill That Protects Religious Liberty - ROGER SEVERINO/HERITAGE FOUNDATION CHARISMA NEWS

(Reuters photo)

President Obama Threatens to Veto Defense Bill That Protects Religious Liberty 

ROGER SEVERINO/HERITAGE FOUNDATION   CHARISMA NEWS   Oct. 28, 2016

On D-Day, Franklin Roosevelt famously asked a country of many faiths to pray that God protect our troops as they "struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization" against tyranny.

Given our military's tradition of defending religious liberty from attack, it is disappointing to see President Barack Obama threaten to veto the military's main authorization bill if it contains protections for religious freedom.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an annual bill that sets policies and budgets for our nation's fighting forces and is currently being negotiated by both houses of Congress in conference before a final vote.

Included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act is an amendment offered by Rep. Steve Russell, R-Okla., that applies decades-old religious exemptions from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) to federal grants and contracts.

The Russell Amendment is sound policy that will prevent the administration from stripping contracts and grants from faith-based social service providers whose internal staffing policies reflect their faith.

Jewish day schools and Catholic adoption centers, for example, are not liable under Title VII for being authentically Jewish or Catholic, and their staffing policies shouldn't disqualify them from federal grants and contracts either.

But Obama's veto threat is actually the strongest proof of why the Russell Amendment is needed. It shows that the president wants absolute freedom to discriminate against religious social service providers that interact with the government—all because many religious organizations won't endorse the LGBT cause. Congress should say no to the president's blatant attack on religious diversity.

Undermining Religious Liberty

For decades, the left has attempted to raise sexual orientation and gender identity to special protected status through Congress. Seeing little success using the democratic process, the Obama administration has instead turned to issuing various edicts that misinterpret existing civil rights protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

On July 21, 2014, Obama issued an executive order that unilaterally elevated sexual orientation and gender identity to special status for purposes of federal contracts.

As our colleague Ryan T. Anderson pointed out at the time, the order "disregards the consciences and liberties of people of goodwill who happen not to share the government's opinions about issues of sexuality. All Americans should be free to contract with the government without penalty because of their reasonable beliefs about morally contentious issues."

The executive order left in place the Title VII religious staffing exemption, and the Russell Amendment merely reaffirms this protection while clarifying that religious organizations have a right to employ people committed to authentically living in accordance with their faith tenets. In short, religious organizations are free to be religious organizations.

But Obama would interpret existing religious protections narrowly in order to make religious groups bend to the LGBT agenda. As seen in the administration's education and health care mandates on gender identity, in practice, this means requiring employee bathrooms and showers meant for women be opened to biological men who self-identify as female regardless of people's religious beliefs on the matter. The administration's proven lack of respect for religious freedom when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity policies is more than enough reason to keep the Russell Amendment.

Reaffirming Long-Standing Policy Is Apparently Unacceptable

Despite the Russell Amendment's straightforwardness and precedent, 42 Senate Democrats have written to the Senate Armed Services Committee asking that the Russell Amendment be stripped from final National Defense Authorization Act language during conference negotiations.

The letter states that prospective employees should not be "disqualified from a taxpayer-funded job based on an individual's religions." Except that's not how federal contracts typically work. Existing organizations bid for contracts to produce services or products based on their ability to deliver them, not to provide somebody "a taxpayer-funded job."

The programs at issue are designed to help the needy in the most effective and efficient way possible, and faith-based organizations have proven that they are often the very best at providing these social services precisely because of their faith-based character.

But moreover, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act already specifically protects religious organizations' ability to hire based on religion, so the burden is on the objectors to the Russell Amendment to prove why a system that has been affirmed by the Supreme Court and has served religious pluralism well for decades should now be stripped away when it comes to federal contracts.

Will Congress Hold the Line?

The Russell Amendment was included in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act and passed by a comfortable margin (277 to 147) because it reflects the best of our traditions without taking away anything from anyone.

Congress should not let the president's veto threat get in the way of passing sound policy, and the Russell Amendment is just that—a commonsense continuation of policy that has served our diverse society well since 1964.

Roger Severino is the director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.

This article was originally published at DailySignal.com. Used with permission.

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March: Why Should Only 'Perfect' Children Be Born?

By Paul Strand

CBN News Washington Sr. Correspondent

Friday, January 23, 2015

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WASHINGTON -- Every year the March for Life has a different focus, and this year it focused on the group most aborted -- the pre-born diagnosed with some sort of disability.

As the marchers gathered on the National Mall near the Washington Monument, they declared those babies are every bit as deserving of life as any other child.

Americans abort about one out of five of their unborn children. But among these 'special needs' unborn, the abortion rate is a staggering 85 percent.

Kristan Hawkins, a pro-life leader who heads up Students for Life of America, is also mother to a special needs child who didn't get aborted. Six-year-old Gunner suffers from cystic fibrosis.

"Which is a deadly, incurable genetic disease," Hawkins told CBN News.

But she said Gunner's life is so precious, a world without him is unimaginable.

"He's smart. He's articulate. He's so tenderhearted," Hawkins said. "I can't imagine our lives without Gunner."

And Hawkins can't imagine denying him his rich, full existence.

"Gunner likes life. He has a pretty good life with his iPad, his brothers, and all of his Legos," she said, laughing.

Potential GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina also attened a pre-March for Life gathering this week held at the Heritage Foundation. She praised women who refuse to go along with the mainstream and give birth to special needs children or even risk their own lives with troubled pregnancies.

Fiorina spoke of one mother-to-be given a stark medical judgment in 1949.

"That an abortion was her only choice. Her doctors feared for her life," Fiorina said.

But the former Hewlett-Packard CEO told the Heritage Foundation audience that particular pregnant woman had deep faith and great courage. She trusted God with her life and refused to abort, giving birth to that baby she was carrying at tremendous danger to her own life and health.

"She spent almost a year in the hospital following his birth," Fiorina said. "But her son -- my husband -- was the joy of her life, and for over 30 years he has been the rock of mine."

CBN News met up with Dr. Grazie Christie at the March for Life. She often works with parents of the unborn as a radiologist.

But this Catholic Assocation Advisory Board member is philosophical about who is and isn't "disabled."

"All of us are disabled. All of us suffer," she said. "You know we can't avoid all the vicissitudes of life. So why should only 'perfect' children be born? Our lives won't be perfect anyway."

Dr. Christie came to tell the March for Life crowd that ultrasound technology is a wonderful thing for showing people so clearly that a fetus is indeed a human being.

"But ultrasound has a dark side," she explained. "It allows us to make pre-natal diagnoses that are then used to eradicate children that don't quite measure up to the standards that we are developing as a society."

And she said it's those standards that should be eliminated, not the children found unacceptable by them.

Even before this year's March for Life began, Fiorina summed up why the marchers come to Washington D.C. every year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

"We gather here because we know that no one of us is any better than any other one of us," she said. "We gather here because we know that every human life has potential and every human life is precious."

As every year before this since the U.S. Supreme Court announced it's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the marchers made their way more than a mile from the National Mall, up Constitution Avenue, and massed in front of the Supreme Court.

There they bore witness to the more than 56 million unborn babies slain since Roe v. Wade.

Marriage Is the Economic Stimulus We Need

Marriage Is the Economic 

Stimulus We Need

By Stephen Moore

CBN News Contributor

Thursday, November 06, 2014

This may be a surprising statement from a bleary-eyed, number-crunching economist, but the best anti-poverty program in America may not be tax cuts or debt reduction or regulatory relief, but rather that old-fashioned institution called marriage.

It turns out that poverty rates are very low among intact families and prevalent among homes without a father. Children who grow up in single-parent households are much more likely to face economic trouble as adults.

Those who cheer divorce as a form of women's liberation, or who say that stigmatizing out-of-wedlock births is just right-wing sermonizing, just don't get this intertwined connection between two-parent households and economic success. Socio-cultural factors like the decline of marriage are leading causes of the wealth gap and the stubborn poverty trap in many low income neighborhoods.

For more economic insight, check out more of Stephen Moore's articles on CBN News here.



This isn't to say that kids who grow up in broken homes can't succeed - millions heroically do. It doesn't mean that every marriage was meant to be - many times divorce is the only option. But what is irrefutable is that marriage with a devoted husband and wife in the home is a far better social program than food stamps, Medicaid, public housing, or even all of them combined.

This conclusion is made clear by a new eye-opening and sometimes depressing report called the Index of Culture and Opportunity by my colleagues at the Heritage Foundation. It's conclusion: "We have to reshape our culture before we can ever hope to make a big dent in the number of poor households."

Some of the cultural indicators are going in a positive direction; others have taken a decidely negative course.

First, the good news: violent crime is down. So is the number of abortions.

But in other ways we are ripping our families and our society apart. Consider these statistics on family breakup.

"From 2001 to 2011, the marriage rate dropped by 10.3 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women, or 22.8 percent. Since the 1960s, it has fallen by about 50 percent."

According to one of the report's scholars, W. Bradford Wilcox, "only about half of the nation's adults are cur­rently married, and about half of the nation's children will spend some time outside an intact, married home."

This is a form of child abuse. And those numbers are much higher in low income communities. In some cities like Detroit and Newark two of every three children are born out of wedlock. Name a government program that can take the place of a father.

This troubling trend appears to be a road block to the American Dream. One study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues, finds that when it comes to what is preveninng the economic upward mobility of poor children, "the strongest and most robust predic­tor is the fraction of children with single parents."

It's also true and often overlooked that family breakup creates a statistical illusion that we are making less economic progress than we actually are. For example, if a married couple earns $80,000, but then ends up in divorce, there are now two households earning $40,000. So it appears the economy is slipping and average household income is falling. But in fact what has slipped is the culture.

Meanwhile, birth rates are falling and falling. In only two of the last 40 years have birth rates exceeded replacement level fertility of 2.1 kids per couple.

Who will take care of and finance the retirement of the near 80 milllion baby boomers? Thank goodness for immigration. The population bomb that was once famously worried about by scholars like Paul Ehrlish has become a population fizzle.

Most economists agree that the sharp decline in the share of Americans between ages 18 to 64 that are working is a major economic hindrance. This isn't just happening by chance but rather as a result of policy and cultural changes.

Welfare households, the report finds, are much more likely to have no one working at all and so the assistance becomes a substitute for work. The value of work is denigrated in our modern society and welfare has been elevated. Millions of jobs are there for the taking if the unemployed and underemployed go out and obtain useful skills.

But our culture too often frowns upon Americans doing what are regarded as grimy, blue collar jobs - even though they can pay $60,000 to $100,000 a year. This may explain why it is so hard to get a plumber or carpenter or any kind of handyman these days.

We also seem to disparage the idea of young people, especially teens, working. We parents spoil our kids - and I'm no less guilty than others - with leisure and money. And many millennials have to come to think that to pull them away from the television or computer or Gameboy screen is an offense that is reportable to child protective services.

But this new report reminds us of the obvious: that there is dignity, character building, and self-sufficiency in all forms of labor.

One of my favorite scenes in a recent movie is in Cinderella Man, when during the depths of the Great Depression, James Bradock, played by Russell Crowe, is forced as a last resort to take a welfare payment from the government to feed his family. His sense of shame is clearly evident. Then, when he wins some prize fights and gets back on his feet, he goes back to the welfare office and returns all the taxpayer money he took in his hour of need.

Who does that today? It is now the opposite. The Obama administration runs television and radio ads assuring welfare recipients they should feel no shame whatsoever in taking a hand out and even tells them that the more they live off the expense of someone else (taxpayers), the better it is for the economy. Liberals are trying to bend the culture in a subversive direction and given that last year we had 47 million on food stamps, the Left is succeeding.

We economists bury ourselves in the data and the formulas to try to devise policy recommendations to make the economy grow faster and raise the living standards of workers and families. It's humbling to realize how much of our nation's economic success is based on a culture of virtue. Do the right thing, as Spike Lee would put it.

To save our economy from a path of decline we need to start with a personal and national commitment to sturdy families, strong parents, and a reemergence of the Protestant work ethic. That shouldn't be so hard.

 is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and an economics contributor to CBN.