Today, top members of Columbia leadership, including President Minouche Shafik, answered for the disturbing wave of antisemitic harassment and discrimination engulfing their university campus. Since the barbaric attack on October 7, antisemitism—verging on support for Hamas terrorism—has been pervasive at Columbia, and university administrators have been left paralyzed in response. In her opening ... Read more »
Today’s Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee hearing commemorated the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). For the past 50 years, ERISA has served as the legislative bedrock for employer-sponsored benefits. Through key provisions such as ERISA preemption, the employer-sponsored benefits system continues to deliver health care val... Read more »
Today, the Workforce Protections Subcommittee held a hearing that covered potential ways to expand access to benefits to every American worker—not just those classified as employees. Nontraditional, independent work is exploding as a sector of the U.S. economy and is expected to constitute half of the workforce by 2027. However, under current law, nontraditional workers— those who do not receive a... Read more »
The Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee convened today to discuss the Department of Education’s (ED) botched rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). FAFSA is a critical tool for low-income students seeking financial aid. Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act at the end of 2020 with an effective date of July 2023 to implement a more streamline... Read more »
Today’s Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee hearing covered the gross mismanagement of taxpayer dollars by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). The hearing featured a lone witness, PBGC Director Gordon Hartogensis. PBGC was created to protect private pension plans from insolvency and was intended to be solely funded by employer premiums. However, under poor leadership ... Read more »
Today, the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and the Higher Education and Workforce Development (HEWD) subcommittees held a joint hearing covering the NLRB’s overreach into college athletics. In recent years, name, image, and likeness compensation has caused political controversy and legal uncertainty for college athletics. In the words of former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, th... Read more »
Divisive. Excessive. Ineffective. These three themes carried the day as the Higher Education and Workforce Development Subcommittee convened to discuss the outsized influence of DEI bureaucracies on college campuses. DEI is a term that garners lots of attention and maybe more definitions. To adherents, it stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. To bureaucrats, it is a jobs program for social ... Read more »
Today’s Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education Subcommittee hearing, led by Chairman Aaron Bean (R-FL), covered the role charter schools play in the thriving school choice ecosystem. Charter schools are relatively new in terms of the American K-12 education system but already having a profound impact on many young lives. Today’s parents have decided to send nearly four million studen... Read more »
Today’s Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee hearing covered the partisan Department of Labor’s (DOL) attempt to limit retirement options for millions of American workers. In proposing the so-called “Retirement Security Rule,” the administration is out way over its skis. DOL has jurisdiction over employer-managed retirement accounts, or 401(k)s, but not the entire retirement invest... Read more »
Today, the Workforce Protections Subcommittee held an oversight hearing covering the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD). The hearing’s lone witness, WHD Administrator Jessica Looman, undertook the tall task of answering for her federal office’s job-killing, burdensome regulations. Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Kiley (R-CA) laid out the case against WHD overregulation with his o... Read more »
