U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Tuesday that despite the budget surplus, Congress is still not willing to pay for higher education needs because it’s not considered a top priority.
Bingaman stopped by Johnson Center for a town hall meeting to answer questions and concerns from students, staff and faculty. He said that Congress is now considering taking money from the federal budget, from which Congress allocates money for higher education, rather than from the $500 million surplus.
“That doesn’t make a lot sense to me,” he said. “I would think if we were using revenues collecting for the priorities we see and we’re still running short, then it would make sense to look at the permanent fund.”
UNM associate professor Beulah Woodfin said she was concerned that no money would be available to solve education problems. She said that the New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee reported to Congress that higher education needs more than $700 million and secondary education needs even more money to be successful and effective.
Woodfin said that Congress’ attitude is that even the surplus can’t address those problems.
Bingaman said he disagreed with the idea of simply never having enough money to solve education problems. He said beginning to fund education is the first step.
He said he had seen a similar situation after serving in the Armed Services Committee for 18 years, when the Defense Department would come to the committee and say it had an enormous backlog of needs annually, and no matter how much money was allocated, the department still needed more.
Bingaman said no matter how much money is still needed, one payment could make a big difference.
“My thought is that these large backlogs of needs really need to be addressed a year at a time,” he said. “If you’ve got $500 million in surplus this year, you can make a first good down payment on solving some of the problems in higher education. You can make a pretty good down payment on solving some of problems in our elementary and secondary education. You can’t solve it all, but you can do pretty well.”
Bingaman said another problem that states have is when they receive block grants, which are general federal grants that states can use for any purpose, they normally don’t address educational needs with those grants. He advocated having the federal government earmark allocations for specific areas.
He said if Congress can allot funds specifically for needs such as Advanced Placement courses or dropout prevention programs, it would help states such as New Mexico solve their education problems.
“The big debate, frankly, that we’re having in education this year is the extent of which the federal government will continue to provide funding in categories,” Bingaman said. “We have historically done that. We identify a need and we set aside a certain amount of money and say ‘If you want money for this purpose, here’s the money. If you don’t want money for this purpose, then somebody else can have it.”
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Bingaman also visited UNM’s Continuing Education Auditorium Tuesday for the first of three installments of his Student Leadership Institute, a public policy forum for local high school students. The institute will continue in Roswell and Las Cruces.
