Legislation to End Student Aid Penalty Stumbles
December 17th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
By Bob Curley
A bid to end federal student-aid penalties for those with drug convictions was launched with high hopes earlier this year, but now appears to be in deep trouble in Congress.
A broad coalition of drug-reform, educational, and addiction-related organizations threw its weight behind a plan to amend the federal Higher Education Act (HEA) and overturn a policy of denying federal financial aid to students convicted of drug offenses. The policy, devised by Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and passed by Congress in 1999, requires students to divulge information about convictions for drug offenses — but not any other crimes — on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
Those who admit to a conviction for possessing an illegal drug lose their loans, grants, and work assistance for a year from the date of their conviction. A second conviction results in a two-year loss of aid, while a third conviction means an indefinite loss. Aid may be reinstated if students complete a drug rehabilitation program and agree to two unannounced drug tests.
A number of factors led critics to be optimistic that the policy would be repealed this year, including the election of the first Democratic majority in both houses of Congress in many years. Legislation to repeal the FAFSA aid ban, sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), had attracted 70 co-sponsors in the previous session of Congress, including Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), now chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
Moreover, backing the legislation were not just drug-policy reform groups like Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) and the American Civil Liberties Union, but also the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the addiction counselors’ group NAADAC, the National Education Association, and a number of religious groups.
Flaws Acknowledged
Even the conservative Souder has admitted flaws with the implementation of the student-aid policy, saying that the federal Department of Education had erred in implementing his legislation. Initially, FAFSA applicants were asked, “Have you ever been convicted of possessing or selling illegal drugs?,” but Souder contended that he only meant for the aid ban to apply to students convicted of drug convictions while in college, not earlier in life. With Souder’s support, the question was amended in 2006.
In the current Congress, Souder also proposed tweaking the legislation to allow students to get their aid restored if they enroll in treatment and pass two drug tests, rather than requiring them to complete treatment.
Those adjustments failed to silence calls for repealing the policy altogether, however, and critics saw the reauthorization of the HEA — being debated in the current session of Congress — as the perfect vehicle for flunking Souder’s aid ban once and for all. However, opponents of the ban were stunned in November when Miller refused to allow a vote on the proposed amendment to the House HEA reauthorization bill. Moreover, the Senate unanimously approved an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dubbed “No Pell Grants for Drug Dealers” that blotted out the FAFSA repeal language in the Senate HSA bill.
“Sold Out”
Tom Angell, government-relations director for SSDP, reacted angrily to the House action, charging in a constituent letter that the Democrat leadership “sold out” supporters of the aid-ban repeal, which Angell said would have had enough votes to pass Miller’s committee.
“From medical marijuana to mandatory minimums, we can’t even get a hearing” in the Democrat-led Congress, said Angell. “It’s incredibly frustrating; you wonder what it’s going to take to get people to pay attention to these issues.”
“The conventional wisdom is that politicans who support drug-policy reform will be labeled as pro-drug and punished at the polls,” added Angell. “It has been really interesting to see how Souder has been able to toe that line.”
Souder seems to have effectively waved the “legalization” flag in front of House lawmakers in a Nov. 1 “Dear Colleague” letter, in which he claimed that the student-aid ban was under “assault by a small but determined coalition of drug-legalization groups.”
That drew a rebuke from the coalition supporting the repeal, who wrote to Souder that the 500-plus organizations opposing the financial-aid penalties “represent a broad range of interests, including the areas of addiction treatment and recovery, civil rights, college administration and admissions, criminal justice, legal reform and faith leaders.”
“Your statement about ‘drug-legalization groups’ concerns us that you may have been up until now unaware of our position on this issue, and we can’t help but worry that your “Dear Colleague” letter may have the unintended consequence of misinforming other members of Congress about the opposition to the penalty,” wrote 18 of the groups to Souder. “Our voices are an important part of this debate, and we therefore respectfully request that you retract your statement characterizing our organizations as “drug-legalization groups.”
No retraction was forthcoming; in fact, after the HEA amendment was defeated, Souder’s deputy chief of staff, Martin Green, crowed in a local Missouri newspaper editorial about the victory over a “determined lobbying from a small group of well-funded drug legalization groups.”
Lack of Cost-Offset Cited
Angell said that Democratic leaders told advocates that the HEA amendment was flawed because it did not contain a cost-offset for the increased number of students who would be eligible for student aid if the ban was lifted, a stance that was acknowledged by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) when he symbolically introduced and then withdraw the amendment on Nov. 14.
“Denying students aid for drug-related charges is simply bad policy. It increases long-term costs to society. College students earn more money and contribute more to the national tax base,” said Scott on the floor of the House. “It unfairly targets poor and minority students … because they are traditionally profiled for drug offenses, and poor students because those are the ones that need financial aid to attend school. It only does drug offenses. It doesn’t do anything against armed robbery, rape or arson. And so it’s somewhat bizarre in its application and it creates a double jeopardy for students who have already paid their debt to society.”
In response, Souder said that there is no evidence to suggest that the ban disproprtionately affects minority students. “I believe that this is a good bill. It is a generous bill,” said Souder. “I believe in rehabilitation. I have supported multiple rehabilitation things, but basically, when you’re getting money from taxpayers who themselves often don’t get to go to college and then you go to college and you get convicted three times before you lose your loan, I believe that you shouldn’t be funded by the taxpayers.”
Angell and other supporters of repeal still retain some hope that they can get a floor vote in the House or have the ban reinserted in the HEA reauthorization bill during a House-Senate conference committee. Also, he said, Rep. Frank recently decided to reintroduce his standalone legislation to lift the student-aid penalty, the Removing Impediments to Student’s Education (RISE) Act, in January.