Weekly Federal Update 5/31/22

President and Administration

President Joe Biden again tried to comfort a nation grieving after the mass shooting in Udalve, Texas, urging action against powerful gunmakers and repeatedly questioning why the country he leads lacks “the backbone” to stem the bloodshed…

The massacre in Texas cast a pall over confirmation hearings last week for Steven Dettelbach, President Biden’s pick to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but it may have improved his chances of being confirmed…

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, President Biden lays out “My Plan for Fighting Inflation”…

U.S. economic growth will exceed three percent in 2022, while roaring inflation has topped and will cool each month to around two percent by some point in 2024, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office…

Monkeypox, a viral illness that is only rarely detected outside of Africa, has been reported in recent weeks in at least 17 countries including the U.S…

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has updated its Statistical Briefing Book with a new Data Snapshot on youth victims of suicide and homicide…

The Supreme Court said on Thursday, 5/26, that it would allow the Biden administration to continue to take account of the costs of greenhouse gas emissions in regulatory actions, rejecting an emergency application from Louisiana and other Republican-led states to block the use of a formula that assigns a monetary value to changes in emissions…

Congress  

Top Republican senators negotiating the Bipartisan Innovation Act are frustrated with the pace of negotiation on the package…

Last week, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) urged his fellow Democratic colleagues at a caucus lunch to include funding to expand care for older people and people with disabilities in any party-line reconciliation repackage that the caucus agrees to… 

Education

Enrollment across all sectors of higher education continued to decline this past semester, marking the fifth semester in a row of declining overall enrollment according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center… 

A new report by the Center for American Progress examines barriers in higher education that contribute to the nation’s nursing shortages and how policy makers can help colleges and universities train more nurses…

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona plans to unveil his proposed Title IX rule  in June, a two-month delay from the original plan to release the rule in April…

Student Loans

Students and recent graduates with heavy debt loads worry that Biden’s plan will be too weak, after the president and his advisers signaled they are considering relief that could be far less than the $50,000-per-borrower sought by prominent Democrats…

The Federal Reserve Bank’s “Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2021” report found that Americans with at least a bachelor’s degree remain far likelier than their peers to describe themselves as “at least doing okay” financially, with those who have an associate or technical degree or who attended “some college” well behind and only a bit above those with just a high school degree…

According to a recent survey of 500 institutions by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, 80 percent of respondents indicated that they were concerned about their financial aid offices’ ability to remain “administratively capable” in the future to reach Education Department requirements for Title IV programs, plus Pell Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants and federal student loans…