E-mail a friendRep. George Miller
airdate October 31, 2007
Rep. George Miller has represented California's 7th District since '75. He was elected chair of the House Education and Labor Committee in the 110th Congress and has also served as House Democratic Policy Committee chair since ‘03. He is one of the four original authors of the No Child Left Behind Act and introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. A graduate of the UC Davis Law School, Miller served as legislative assistant to state senate majority leader George Moscone before entering the House.
Full interview. (12:05)
Rep. George Miller
Tavis: In early October, the House passed the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which provides nearly $20 billion in financial aid to low- and middle-income students and their families. As I mentioned at the top, the bill is the largest single investment in higher education since the GI bill, and provides millions for historically Black colleges and universities in particular.
This sweeping bill was spearheaded by Congressman George Miller of California, chair of the House, Education, and Labor Committee, who joins us tonight from Capitol Hill. Congressman, nice to have you back on the program.
Rep. George Miller: Hey, thank you very much, good to talk with you.
Tavis: Glad to have you. I want to start by saying congratulations, although I temper that, with all due respect to your fine work. I temper that because I suspect those watching tonight are still leery of whether or not we have done enough here, given that the cost of college has been rising so fast. It's kind of like when the minimum wage finally got upped, we'd gone for 10 years without a raise, so what have we really done here, in other words?
Miller: Well, what we've done here, I think, is made a, well, historic investment in the next generation of college students. The $20 billion in excessive subsidies that we were able to take away from the banks and the big lenders and recycle on behalf of the students and their families who are struggling to pay for college, as you pointed out, it's historic.
It's a remarkable effort by the Congress. It means now that low-income students will get a boost in the Pell Grant over the next five years of $1,000. It also means that middle-income, low-income families that have to borrow money to pay for college will see their interest rate over the next five years cut in half from 6.8 percent today to 3.5 percent over that period of time.
And that's about a $4,000 savings over the life of that loan for that student. Then if that student decides that they want to become a teacher, they're high performing in college, we'll give them up front tuition assistance while they're in college. And if they go into teaching in public schools, we will also provide them loan forgiveness.
For people who want to become doctors, nurses, firemen, policemen, public prosecutors, public defenders - in the public services in this country - if they stay there 10 years, we will forgive their loans. That's worth thousands of dollars. This is real money in people's pocket so that they can make decisions about following their interests, following their heart, working for the good of this country, and understanding that they can afford to make those professional choices now where if they thought they were saddled with a huge amount of unmanageable debt, they might choose something else.
Tavis: There is a particular piece in here that I referenced earlier that targets historically Black colleges and universities, better known as HBCUs. Tell me about that piece of the legislation.
Miller: Well, that is a big investment over the next two years of some $500 million into those schools to make sure that they are providing the services necessary to keep, in many cases, first generation students who are coming to those schools, that they successfully navigate the schools, complete their course of study, get their degree, and make a decision to go to work or go on to graduate school, and that's what those resources are there for.
We're also doing it for what we call the predominantly minority-serving institutions. Those public institutions and others that serve a high proportion of African Americans or Hispanic populations, or other minorities. There's about $30 million for those schools for the first time. Because too often, what we see is students who are fully qualified to go to school, from poor or minority communities, very often get to college, and it's a very strange environment.
They're not used to it, and very often, what they end up with is debt from a loan that they took out, and no degree. We want to keep them in school. We need them in our economy, we need them in our society, and this legislation provides the means to do that.
Tavis: Tell me more about the impact you think that long term, this kind of huge investment can, in fact, have, not just on education but beyond that, on the economy itself.
Miller: Well I think at the moment, we can say to a student who chooses a public institution in my own state of California and many other states, that they truly can afford this education. When we look at the loans that are available, grant programs that are available to them, the reduction in the cost of paying back those loans, and now even loan forgiveness if they go into public interest careers, they make a huge mistake not to choose college.
Because the value of that education is worth about $1 million more over their lifetime earnings as opposed to somebody who gets a high school degree and doesn't go on to education. For our society, a complex, diverse society, we need people who have these skills to critically think and disseminate information and assimilate information, so that we can maintain this large democracy we call America.
For our economy, it's hard to see how we would compete in an increasingly globalized world if these students aren't able to complete their education. Remember, they're fully qualified to go to college, but many of them - some 200,000 this last year - decided maybe they wouldn't go to college because they were fearful that they couldn't afford it.
And we really cannot have people have the college door closed to them because they don't have the money to go to college. I think with this package, tomorrow we're starting the hearings on what the colleges can do to help us. As you pointed out at the top of the program, college costs are going up much faster than inflation.
We can't continue to have that trend, otherwise they will use up all of the benefits that the Congress just gave to these families and to these students who are struggling.
Tavis: I hear your point, Congressman Miller, about the importance of choosing college, and I suspect that no one watching this program right now would argue that point, that it is always better in this economy, certainly, to choose college. The question is whether or not the college will choose you. And by that I mean to suggest that although you've put all this on the table, which I think is wonderful, there is a concern, legitimately, I think, that colleges are not choosing people of color.
Help me juxtapose what you've put on the table to help people of color and others choose college, but specifically where those Americans of color are concerned, they're seeing story after story about these institutions no longer using race as a factor in admissions, which makes it difficult. You're from California; this TV show right now emanates from California. You know the numbers as well as I do. Inside the UC system at UCLA, the dwindling, the downright spiraling of numbers of students of color who are getting admitted to these institutions because of the attack on these kinds of programs, corrective programs, to let people of color in to begin with.
Miller: Well, we're going to challenge those institutions to make sure that they do, in fact, represent a cross-section of the state. It's hard to believe that you can continue to have support for a publicly financed system, whether it's at UCLA or San Jose State or my alma mater of San Francisco State, or UC Berkeley. If in fact they're not going to be able to educate a cross-section of the state such as ours of California.
One of the things we did in this legislation also was put in over $200 million for Upward Bound, to make sure that we have an effort in concert with the colleges to go out into the community, identify those students who are interested in college, make sure they complete their coursework, make sure they graduate from high school, expose them to college life in the summers or in the different vacation periods, so they understand that they are eligible, they can go there, if they complete their coursework.
An awful lot of students in poor communities aren't aware that UCLA is 20 minutes down the road, or UC Berkeley is 20 minutes down the road from my district. And we've got to make a concerted effort to reach out to those students, and then the colleges can't say no to them, because they're fully qualified, they're fully prepared, and they're fully eligible to go to that school.
We've got to work both sides of it, but the colleges have got to figure out how they meet their social responsibility to the taxpayers and the citizens of that state.
Tavis: I'm trying to, again, juxtapose here in my own mind or to my own ear what I hear you suggesting that the Congress is doing now aggressively on the subject of education, with President Bush two or three times now over the last week or two saying this is a do-nothing Congress, that you all aren't getting anything done, there's nothing being passed out of this Congress. You've heard him say it as well as I have.
Miller: Well, this president just doesn't understand. We've done three things, just quickly here. One, you mentioned the minimum wage. After 10 years of the Republicans refusing to address the minimum wage, we passed the minimum wage, overwhelming, bipartisan, and the president of the United States, Mr. Bush, signed that bill after he said he wouldn't do it.
We passed the College Cost Reduction bill. He said he was going to veto this bill three different times, but he wasn't going to stand between low-income and middle-income families that are struggling to pay for their education. He passed that bill, the biggest contribution since the Korean War. Mr. Bush doesn't remember, but he passed that bill.
On the Innovation Act, we created a whole new program to encourage young people to go into math, science, and engineering with the National Science Foundation, creating programs for teachers and students and graduate students and others - the largest contribution probably since the Kennedy space program to send a person to the Moon and bring them back safely.
So we've done three historic things in this Congress, just in this universe that I'm involved with, and I'm afraid the president just doesn't want to recall for the public that the Congress did that.
We also passed the toughest ethics law in the history of the Congress. The president doesn't want to remember that. We completed the 9/11 commission studies to make this country safer by ensuring that our airports and our ports are safer, that the president and the Republicans wouldn't do. The president signed that. He said he was going to veto that.
This president just doesn't like to recall that on his watch, the Democratic Congress has passed legislation that has a huge impact on the people of this country. And right now, we're engaged in a knock-down fight with this president to get 10 million children healthcare coverage that they wouldn't have otherwise. And the president says he's going to veto that bill. I think at the end of the day, we're going to have 10 million children insured, as they should be, so they, too, can be productive, they can achieve in school, they can go on to college, and they can participate.
Tavis: Thirty seconds to go, Congressman. One of the next things on your agenda is reauthorizing this No Child Left Behind. We could debate that ad nauseam. People have questions about it. Tell me what's going to happen on this No Child Left Behind bill.
Miller: We're going to push forward, we're going to change this bill, we're going to make it work for local school districts. We're going to keep our commitment to close the achievement gap between poor and minority children and middle-class children. We're going to make sure that schools are held accountable for the performance of each and every one of these children. We're not going to continue to lose these children or to push them aside, make them invisible.
We're going to make sure that they have the opportunity to have a first-class education with a highly qualified teacher so they, too, can take advantage of a college education. And that's the goal, my goal, as chairman of the committee. That's what my committee's been working on. The president's making it very difficult, because again, he's threatening to veto all of the new education money in the bill that would allow us to make these changes in. No Child Left Behind
Tavis: He is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, California Democrat George Miller. Congressman, thank you for your service. Nice to have you on the program. We'll do it again soon, I promise.
Miller: Thank you.
Tavis: Take care of yourself.
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