THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2006
Friday Edition: Police Protest Cuts
A fight is cooking on Capitol Hill over
budget cuts, proposed by the Justice Department, that will affect
local police departments.
The Washington Post summarizes the issue:
According
to the police group, the most controversial proposals include a $376
million reduction in the popular Community Oriented Policing Services program and the elimination of the $416 million Justice Assistance Grant program. The administration is also proposing to eliminate the
$400 million Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program at the
Department of Homeland Security.
Overall,
the Justice Department's budget would decrease slightly in 2007, to
about $20 billion, and would include significant increases for the FBI,
the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. attorneys offices.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police are all over this one -- lobbying Congress and talking to whomever will listen.
Officer.com explains the reasons behind the budget proposal, including how the administration plans to increase funding for fighting terrorism, even while cutting some local funds.
Students' Debt Prevents Them From Becoming Teachers
In July, the federal student loan rate
will rise to the highest level it has been since 2001. That is bad news
for the millions of students who are struggling under a mountain of
debt. For some, the debt is so large that it factors largely into the
kind of work students choose to do after school.
Newsday reports:
Simply put, public
service-minded grads faced with tens of thousands of dollars in debt
are being forced into the higher-paying private sector, the Public
Interest Research Group in Washington D.C. found.
"Burdensome debt
likely deters skilled and dedicated college graduates from entering and
staying in important careers [such as] educating our nation's
children," the report concluded.
Aspiring social workers, with typically lower salaries than teachers, were also burdened with too much student-loan debt.
Nationwide,
23 percent of public college and 38 percent of private college graduates had
"unmanageable" debt -- that is, student-loan payments that "hinder
their ability to pay for basic necessities."
USA Today reports:
And the cost of that
debt is about to rise. On July 1, the rate on new federally guaranteed
student loans will hit a fixed 6.8 percent, the highest rate since 2001. It
comes as the average graduate owes $19,000. Many undergrads, though,
have debt exceeding $40,000.
Those higher payments
carry huge implications for this generation of college graduates. The
weight of debt is forcing many to put off saving for retirement,
getting married, buying homes and putting aside money for their own
children's educations.
The story continues:
The average debt for a college graduate has soared 50 percent in the past decade, after inflation, according to the Project on Student Debt, a non-profit advocacy group.
Just as record-low mortgage rates have eased the impact of soaring home
prices, low student-loan rates have let borrowers cut their payments,
softening the impact of rising debt.
"Low interest rates
have served as a sort of amnesty for graduates with debt," says Robert
Shireman, founder of the Project on Student Debt. "We haven't seen what
the real impact is of much higher levels of borrowing."
Now, with interest rates rising, that amnesty is about to end. The 6.8 percent fixed rate for Stafford
loans, the most popular student loan, will replace a variable rate that
used to be adjusted every July 1, based on Treasury bills. Under the
old system, borrowers could consolidate their loans when rates were
low. And they could lock in that low rate for the life of their loans.
Today, students who
don't want to borrow at higher rates have few other options.
Twenty-five years ago, students who wanted to avoid debt could use
money from part-time and summer jobs to help pay for college. But since
then, college tuition has risen at twice the rate of consumer prices.
Tuition has soared much faster than pay has for the kinds of low-wage
jobs that students tend to hold.
In 1981, a student
could work full time all summer at minimum wage and earn about
two-thirds of annual college costs, according to an analysis by Heather
Boushey, economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Today, a student earning minimum wage would have to work full time for
a year to afford one year of education at a four-year public university
-- and that assumes she saves every penny, Boushey concluded.
Parents, meantime,
face competing demands for their money. They're trying to save for
retirement just as their kids are starting college. Financial planners
have long urged people not to delay retirement saving to pay for
college. The idea was that students could borrow for college but that
parents can't borrow for retirement.
Additional stories:
Eye Fungus in Contact-Lens Wearers
I am seeing this story much more often around the country
since I last reported it on Al's Morning Meeting. It is a
mysterious fungus showing up in a small -- but possibly spreading --
number of soft-contact wearers.
Professional Patients Score Meds
The Modesto (Calif.) Bee reports a story about so-called "professional patients," who scam hospital ERs for pain medication.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium
of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of
Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the
information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed
and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the
original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 6:22:13 PM
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