Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan, has been tapped to chair the Home Committee on Schooling and the Workforce.
“We’ve vital work forward of us, from enshrining protections for folks to persevering with to guard Jewish college students on school campuses to rights offering extra alternative and suppleness to American staff,” Walberg mentioned in an announcement Thursday. “Freedom, alternative, and equity will information our work as we ship outcomes for America.”
His assertion means that at the very least one among his larger schooling priorities will mirror that of the committee’s outgoing chief, Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina. For over a 12 months, Foxx and different committee Republicans have investigated schools’ response to campus unrest following the October 2023 outbreak of the Israel-Hamas battle.
Most lately, they launched a scathing 325-page report that accused 11 high-profile schools of failing to guard Jewish college students from discrimination and referred to as for a overview of their federal funding.
Foxx praised Walberg’s choice in an announcement Thursday.
“He’s been a collaborative, efficient, and hardworking member of the Committee for 16 years, and I’m excited to see him step into this management position,” Foxx mentioned. “I’ve little doubt that he’ll hit the bottom operating and can work tirelessly to make sure college students have the chance to study and staff have the power to succeed.”
Walberg’s latest press interviews present clues about his different larger schooling priorities. In October, he informed Politico that he would use the highest management place to give attention to school affordability, enhance apprenticeships and internships, and make Pell Grants obtainable for short-term workforce coaching packages.
The ultimate initiative exhibits rising bipartisan momentum.
A bunch of bipartisan lawmakers, together with Foxx and Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and rating member on the schooling committee, launched a invoice earlier this month that might make Pell Grant packages obtainable for workforce coaching in 2025 and initially fund them with $40 million.
In an interview earlier this month with Roll Name, Walberg equally mentioned he would give attention to offering alternate options to varsity.
“We’ve wrung our arms for too lengthy about boys not happening to varsity,’’ Walberg informed the publication. “There are most likely a number of causes for that, however we additionally know that there are many boys — and women — who, given the chance to see what’s on the market, could make [other] selections.”
The Home Republican Steering Committee voted to select Walberg because the Home’s schooling chair over Utah Republican Rep. Burgess Owens after each lawmakers offered earlier than its members, Politico reported.
Owens presently chairs the panel’s subcommittee on larger schooling and workforce improvement. He’s a fierce critic of range, fairness and inclusion initiatives on school campuses. Forward of a listening to earlier this 12 months on the topic, Owens mentioned in an announcement that, “We can not let DEI sabotage our nation’s elementary values of exhausting work and meritocracy.”
He additionally launched laws in Might 2023 that would prohibit accreditors from requiring schools to stick to DEI requirements.
Walberg’s choice because the Home panel’s prime chief comes two years after he misplaced out on the position to Foxx, who has chaired the committee twice and served because the Republicans’ rating member between 2019 and 2022. On the time, the Steering Committee granted her a waiver to exceed the place’s time period limits.
The highest schooling management place within the Senate — chair of the Well being, Schooling, Labor and Pensions Committee — will go to Invoice Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. Cassidy was named the Senate panel’s chair in November.
Cassidy has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration’s scholar mortgage forgiveness efforts, together with by spearheading a decision to cease President Joe Biden’s unique debt aid plan. That plan, which might have supplied as much as $20,000 in mortgage forgiveness per borrower, was in the end struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
