After cutting 12 billion in student aid, Congress went back and gutted our country's education system even further by passing HR 609 - the College Access and Opportunity Act of 2005. An analysis of the problems with the bill can be found here. The remark that struck me the most on the house floor during debate was by Frank Wolf:
There is a critical shortage of math, science and engineering students in the United States. Unfortunately, there has been little public awareness of this downward trend and its implications for jobs, industry or national security in America's future. With the president's American Competitiveness Initiative announced at the State of the Union earlier this year, public awareness is increasing, but we still need to do everything we can to help attract more students to these fields.
But Frank Wolf is chair of the Appropriations Sub-committee for Science-State-Justice-Commerce, which also includes Tom Delay and Virgil Goode as members. Frank Wolf oversees budgeting for science in our country (both for education as well as programs like NASA and the NSF). So, if we've fallen behind, isn't Wolf one of those we should hold responsible? Isn't his job to ensure public awareness of failures in Science? Wasn't Frank Wolf the one we depended on to help us stay competitve, while instead he watched us outsource science and technology jobs to other countries?
Wolf has introduced another bill (probably nothing to worry about, since the majority of his bills die in committee, a la Bob Marshall). HR 1547 - The Math and Science Incentive Act of 2005, basically forgives $10,000 in student loan interest to:
So, while Frank voted for HR 609, which would not give interest breaks to students that just had 12 billion stolen from them, he was willing to give interest breaks in HR 1547, to math, science, or engineering students. This is all simply a distraction from the fact that Frank Wolf failed in his dutied to properly fund and advance science, and sat idly by while math, science, and engineering jobs were outsourced or American workers in those positions were replaced by foriegn H1B visa workers.
How is Frank Wolf getting away with this? His own House.gov bio says:
The 10th District is extremely diverse. In addition to being the home of some of the world's leading Internet and high-tech companies...
If you want to make a change, and remove a guy who watched the world go by and decided to act once it was too late, vote for Judy Feder this November. She's brilliant, and she's the Dean of Georgetown Public Policy Institute. Judy has the right ideas to save education.
There is a critical shortage of math, science and engineering students in the United States.
This is the recurrent theme of the IT Industry's outsourcing contingent. It's the same theme Harris Miller used to flood California with immigrant workers and bust
Caesar Chavez United Farm Workers Union.
Training is critical to the US economy, but here you see Wolf using the same tired phrasing to steal from IT workers, Teachers, and Students alike while winking in the direction of IT employers.