Several GOP presidential candidates have called for eliminating the department, including U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Others have called for at least weakening it.

Tom Harkin

“How much it’s involved and how it’s involved is open for debate obviously, that’s open for discussion,” Harkin said of the department. “But to say that the federal government has no role in elementary, secondary education, or any education is just nonsense. We have a role, we have a very important role to play.”

Harkin said since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there’s been an expression of the federal government having a role in education of the territories, and even suggested the preamble of the U.S. Constitution calls for the federal government being involved in education.

“I submit to you that you can’t promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty without education,” Harkin said.

He also said the United States is “still one nation,” and every state and district has an interest in making sure children don’t fall through the cracks.

“A child who’s ill-educated in one state may not just be a burden in that state, that child can move to Iowa or Nebraska or Minnesota, you get my point,” Harkin said. “So we have a national interest in this from that standpoint.”

But Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was quick to acknowledge there is a division in Congress and among the American people about the role of the federal government in education.

He said his committee has had that debate over the last year as they’ve worked on the Elementary and Secondary Education Reauthorization Act of 2011, which was just approved out of committee on a bipartisan vote.

“That’s fine, but that doesn’t mean they’re irrevocable differences,” Harkin said. “It just means we have to get together and try to find a meeting ground, a common ground on which we can move forward, and I believe we’ve done that in this bill.”

That bill largely does away with No Child Left Behind, Harkin said, a controversial act passed in 2001. Harkin made the comments during a tour of the Des Moines Public Schools’ Downtown School on Friday morning.

“I haven’t been here a long time and I’ve spent a lot of time complaining about how the place works,” Bennet said, pacing at the podium, his voice rising, his hands at times folded in front of him modeling a posture of frustrated restraint. “I implore the senator from Kentucky to reconsider his objection [to continued debate]… Finally, after two and a half years, there’s a bipartisan piece of legislation in front of the committee and we’re told that meeting for two hours is too long…

“You know why people are fed up this place? It’s because they don’t think the debate we’re having is about them. They think the debate we’re having is about us. And they’re right about that.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act would remove the yearly progress reports mandated by the Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act. It would also lift penalties imposed on schools that fail to meet annual standards set by No Child Left Behind, focusing accountability on only the lowest performing schools.

Indeed, the bill seeks in general to lower federal involvement in education, a proposal normally likely to draw the support of small-government lawmakers like Paul.

“The teachers all across this state want us to lift this burden from them, in my view the biggest federal overreach ever in domestic policy,” Bennet said. “That’s what this bill does, not for ideological reasons, but to respond to the voices of our teachers, respond to the voices of our superintendents.

“[The bill] responds to the voices of our parents who are sick and tired of the almost comical but to them painful measures of annual progress, the idea that we’re going to label all of our schools failing by 2014 because we have a completely made up accountability system in Washington DC. This bill does away with that!”

The remarks came during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee markup session, a session where committee members amend and rewrite legislation. Bennet was superintendent of the Denver public school system before being appointed to the senate in 2009 and he seems to prize his work for the HELP committee and his work on this bill in particular.

Senator Paul, who won his seat in the Tea Party wave election last November, expressed frustration that he didn’t have time enough to fully consider the roughly 800-page bill. He derided the process as unrealistic and said the public had been locked out of the debate.

Committee Chairman Tom Harkin from Iowa pointed out in response that the committee held ten public hearings on the legislation in 2010 and that the bill had been in the works for years. As a HELP committee member, Paul could have taken time since assuming office to familiarize himself with the legislation, he said.

Bennet told Paul that while they were dithering over politicized chamber rules, teachers were at work in Colorado, at 11:15 pm, preparing for classes.

“When people see the political games that are being played here, when they see people who are unwilling to work together and they are killing themselves to deliver for our kids, I’m not sure there’s anything more backhanded we could do.”

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Occupy Wall Street and its many spinoffs may be on its way to getting at least one billboard. EpicStep will donate a billboard if at least 20,000 people go online and vote for a design and a city to place it in. If enough people vote, EpicStep has announced it will donate two billboards in the heart of Times Square.

From the EpicStep website:

Our nation’s economy and system is collapsing under the control of the top 1% of wealthy Americans. Unemployment is at a standstill, foreclosures are displacing families and the future of the United States is in the hands of unemployed college graduates with excessive debt from student loans. Changes on Wall Street including globalization and the government widening the threshold of Wall Street’s power gave tremendous opportunity for the rich, who possess 40% of the nation’s wealth, and stripped the lower and middle class of the American dream.

We must unite, stand strong and demand the government hears the voice democracy gives us. If you are the 99%, you can take back your voice.

In Denver, Occupy Denver continues to grow, with hundreds turning out for a cold rainy march on Saturday and dozens of tents now holding fort at the Capitol.

Nationally, Herman Cain and Glenn Beck have been among the most outspoken in condemning the movement.

Occupy Wall Street has inspired spinoffs in cities from coast to coast, including Occupy DC, Occupy Austin, Occupy Minnesota, and Occupy Fort Lauderdale.

U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, D-Ia, has been one of the few mainstream politicians so far to speak favorably about the Occupy Movement.

A potpourri of libertarians, anti-war protesters, opponents of the Federal Reserve, combat veterans and labor groups descended onto Freedom Square today in the nation’s capital as part of the ongoing public demonstration occurring in the wake of the three-week long Occupy Wall Street event in New York City.

A stage was set up at the D.C. park with a large-scaled reprint of “We The People” — the first words of the U.S. Constitution — hanging in the background. If that appears vague, the entertainment did little to showcase a cohesive narrative.

David Rovics, a progressive folk musician popular on the protest circuit performed, singing a song that included the lyrics, “This world was made for all us and we’re gonna change the scene.”

Slam poets and hip-hop acts inveighed against police brutality and corporate greed, with one shouting on stage, “America loves to kill…[you] cannot get away from the kill in America.” A chorus of older women calling themselves the Raging Grannies were also on hand.

In the audience, however, were hundreds of protestors with specific bones to pick, and their animus was aimed at institutions beyond Wall Street.

Sheri Morgan, a nurse from Greencastle, P.A., held up a sign calling for higher taxes on the wealthy. She said she came to demand a single-payer healthcare system and more progressive taxation. “Small and large corporations need to pay their fair share,” Morgan said. “Tax attorneys are working hard to keep these people from paying the taxes they owe.”

Labor groups the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters joined the rally. Leslie Miller, a communications coordinator for the Teamsters, said the need for change is simple math and that corporations are not paying their fair share. “Social programs get cut because tax revenues dip, and then workers lose their jobs,” she said.

“Corporations are not creating jobs. They’re sitting on profits,” Miller added. She listed a slew of grievances, from the median wage in 2009 to firms forcing workers to forfeit collective bargaining right and pensions. “This is sadly becoming more and more typical,” Miller said.

Patrick McGann, an active-duty marine who joined the services in 2009, came out because he objects to the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. “We don’t need to spend trillions of dollars on foreign wars,” he said. “Past empires fell because they expanded too far and failed to address their domestic problems.”

McGann added his unhappiness with the amount of time that passed before the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” “Someone’s gay? I don’t care,” he said. “They bleed the same color I do, and I’m in the infantry.”

Critics of the event were also present. At a nearby Starbucks, a Republican lobbyist said: “I don’t even know what they’re protesting over there. Government regulation just encourages corporations to pass the extra costs onto the consumer. I’m not going to pay $10 for tube socks to protest how WalMart does its business.”

Much of the disappointment those attending expressed with the tax system has come under scrutiny in the last year. The Nation reported in March that two-thirds of U.S. corporations do not pay federal taxes, which excludes payroll, state, and other levies. In August, The Institute for Policy Studies released a report titled, “The Massive CEO Rewards for Tax Dodging.” While the New York Times ran with the report, Felix Salmon of Reuters took issue the study’s research methodology.

Information on Occupy Denver is here.

As most in the political elite try to ignore the movement, U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, D-IA, says the protesters deserve a listen.

As lawmakers in Washington look for answers to ongoing economic woes, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin said he and his colleagues would be “foolish to ignore the voices” of people throughout the nation who have begun to take part in the Occupy Wall Street movement by protesting and demonstrating against the current inequitable system that is “rigged against their interests.”

“For more than a decade we’ve been told that endless tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy would result in millions jobs and a booming economy. That’s the same old trickle-down economics that has never worked before and it is not working now. For most Americans the only thing that has trickled down are wage cuts, upside-down mortgages, mass unemployment, personal bankruptcies and disappearing pensions,” Harkin said on a conference call with the media Thursday morning.

“Instead of this failed trickle-down economics for the rich, it’s time for percolate-up economics for the rest.”

Lawmkers, he said, would be remiss if they didn’t pay attention to the demonstrators and what they are trying to convey.

“I think we are now seeing rank-and-file Americans stand up and demand more fairness and equity in our tax policy, and on focusing on putting people back to work. I think, quite frankly, for too long both the President and members of the Democratic Party here in the Senate and the House have laid back. Now is the time to understand that there is a big movement going on in America and it’s not just on the tea party side,” he said. “It’s on the side of people who are out of work, who understand the system is rigged against them in terms of taxes and who is paying their fair share. I think we need to pick that up and move as aggressively as possible on this.”

As chairman of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Harkin said he has been asked to submit recommendations to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.

“I have a simple message to the Super Committee, and that is: Go big on jobs,” he said.

“I’m urging members of the super committee to break free from the Washington group-think that defines success very narrowly in terms of maximizing deficit reduction. They need to embrace a more powerful and broader definition of success that includes boosting the economy and creating jobs. After all, the most effective way to reduce the deficit is to help 25 million unemployed and under-employed Americans find jobs and become taxpayers again.”

Without a return to normal levels of employment in the nation, he added, there can be no sustained reduction of the deficit. And, if Congress does meet with anticipated gridlock over the American Jobs Act, which is President Obama’s proposal to seed the economy, the American people are going to have to make a decision and let their voices be heard in the next election, Harkin said.

“Do we want to continue down the path of trickle-down economics, tax benefits for big corporations and the wealthy, continued high rates of unemployment and continued imports of products from China that are subsidized because of the way they manipulate their currency? Or are we going to have a different course of action in the future?” he asked.

“We are going to have make these decisions, and I hope we come down on the side of those who are demanding a fairer system in this country.”

Congressional Republicans need to “take Medicare off the table” and deal directly with the nation’s debt-ceiling, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said Friday.

The attempts by national Republicans to connect discussions on raising the nation’s debt-ceiling and reforming Medicare is “absolutely responsible,” added U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (R-RI).

The two Democrats spoke to reporters on a conference call one day following a warning from Moody’s Investors Service that the nation’s credit rating is in jeopardy unless Congress acts soon to avert a default. Harkin and Reed indicated that productive discussions were being jeopardized by key Republicans who want to include “the GOP’s plan to dismantle Medicare.”

The GOP Medicare reform plan was approved in the Republican-controlled U.S. House as part of the budget developed by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Both Ryan, who serves as House budget chairman, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have insisted that the House-approved overhaul should be a part of ongoing negotiations concerning the debt-ceiling.

“Our message is simply: Take Medicare off the table,” said Harkin. “Let’s solve the default crisis, and let’s talk about fixing the system so that our middle class has a little bit better shape.”

Medicare is, he added, a “complicated, complex topic” that deserves its own discussion.

In essence, the GOP plan would replace Medicare with vouchers or subsidies that could be used to purchase private insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, “a private health insurance plan covering the standardized benefit would, CBO estimates, be more expensive currently than traditional Medicare.” The CBO estimates that by 2022 the cost of a Medicare-equivalent health insurance plan purchased from a private company for a 65-year-old would be $20,500. The same plan via Medicare would cost $14,500. Privatizing the system through the voucher system that Congressional Republicans have proposed would require seniors to pay an additional $6,000 per year in health care coverage costs (above the $6,500 out-of-pocket payments already required).

In the wake of widespread criticism for this and other aspects of Ryan’s budget plan — not to mention a resounding special election defeat in New York where the Republican budget served as a discussion centerpiece — Congressional Republicans have charged that they are at least trying to reduce entitlement expenses and that Congressional Democrats have no ideas or desire to address the issue.

No so, Harkin fired back Friday. Drug price negotiations, moving low-income Medicare recipients to the Medicaid program, and allowing time for recently passed health care reforms related to health care structure and prevention programs to kick in would all be cost reduction items that Democrats would find largely non-controversial, he said.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin reacted positively to news Friday that an appellate court overturned a ban of federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, noting that it protects the ability of scientists to continue to explore possible medical advances.

“On behalf of all the scientists and researchers on the forefront of stem cell research and the countless families impacted by the potential cures this research offers, we celebrate that the tide is turning in our favor,” said Harkin.

Harkin, who has long led the fight to advance stem cell research, leads the appropriations subcommittee that funds medical research and the Senate health committee.

“This ruling, based on the merits, protects the ability of scientists to continue to explore the promise of stem cell research. My hope is that the legal wrangling ends here. because if the last few years have proven anything, it is that our fight to preserve funding for stem cell research — one of the most promising areas of medical research available today — must continue,” he said.

Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette also praised the decision.

In March 2009, President Barack Obama lifted the Bush administration’s eight-year ban on federal funding for the research, but on in August 2010 U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth issued a temporary injunction on the expansion. The judge issued a 15-page decision in the case — which was initially brought by a former MIT scientist and others who hold values-based objections to stem cell research — and decided that regulations to expand federal funding for the research violated a law that prohibits destruction of embryos for research purposes.

The judge also ruled that such an expansion would harm less controversial adult stem cell researchers, such as the MIT scientist who brought the case, who would be forced to compete for federal funding.

In a 2-to-1 decision Friday, a federal appellate panel in Washington overturned Lamberth’s order.

The White House, unsurprisingly, immediately praised the new ruling, saying that “responsible stem cell research has the potential to treat some of our most devastating diseases and conditions and offers hope to families across the country and around the world.”

The appellate court said that the injunction would provide a significant hardship on stem cell researchers at the National Institutes of Health, specifically because it would adversely impact multi-year studies that had already begun. That Congress had chosen to reauthorize the 1996 law protecting embryos while in full knowledge that stem cell research was taking place, according to the court, was proof that Congress hadn’t intended to outlaw such study.

An estimate from the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine Stem Cell Group at the time of Lamberth’s ruling was that the injunction would cost the facility roughly $110,000 because it only applied to very specific type of stem cell research.

U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-Mount Vernon), who represents the District in which the medical research facility resides, also praised the court’s decision.

“For more than 100 million Americans that suffer from cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other debilitating diseases and disorders, this decision holds great promise. Overturning this ban will enable our scientists and researchers to work toward new cures and treatments for life altering and threatening diseases, and vastly improve the quality of life for so many Americans,” Loebsack said.

Student loan defaults are on the rise, according to a new federal tracking system. For students who began repaying their loans in 2008, 13.8 percent have since defaulted. For profit institutions had 25 percent of their graduates defaulting after three years, and public four-year colleges had 10.8 percent of their graduates defaulting after three years.

“These disturbing numbers clearly indicate the need for local, state, and national leaders to strengthen their prioritization of higher education,” said United States Student Association President Lindsay McCluskey. “Young people face a staggering unemployment rate far above the national average and cannot afford to begin a post-collegiate life while saddled with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.”

U.S. House Republicans sought $64 billion in cuts in Pell Grant mandatory funding over the next 10 years as a result of the deep reduction it would make in the 2011 fiscal year, through H.R. 1. It would go on to make a 30 percent reduction in 2014 to Pell grants, and a 34 percent reduction in 2017.

U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposed budget for FY 2012 would also bring Pell Grants down to “pre-stimulus” levels.

The current proposal in the House would bring the maximum grant down from $5,550 to $3,040 per year, its lowest level since 1998. The grants would go down to $2,090 in the 2012-13 school year. It would also throw 1.4 million students out of eligibility.

President Obama’s proposed 2012 budget would keep the maximum grant at $5,550. However, the Obama administration is putting forward the idea of scaling back year-round Pell Grants, eliminating the summer assistance. That proposal was included in the Continuing Resolution signed on April 15, but colleges say they are awaiting guidance from the U.S. Department of Education before proceeding.

Ryan argues, citing a 2005 study by the University of Oregon, that as Pell Grants increase, so to does the average tuition to attend college.

The Institute for College Access & Success defends against the study, saying most economists who study higher education do not find a link between federal aid and increases in tuition.

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the head of the Senate HELP committee, told The Iowa Independent in March that private non-profit universities were pleading with the U.S. Senate not to cut Pell Grants because of the effect it would have on other students and their budgets.

“They came in to see us and said if [the government] whacks the Pell Grants, their tuition will greatly increase,” Harkin said. “What happens is if some of these students don’t get that Pell Grant, then they can’t go to school. Now if they can’t go to school then the private colleges then have to increase the tuition on other students who may come in. If you increase that tuition that means some more may drop out, and that creates this ripple effect if you cut the Pell Grants.”

Harkin has been adamant that cutting assistance for students to attend higher education is not the answer. He criticized major companies who have been avoiding their taxes. He mentioned Carnival Cruise Lines bringing in $5 billion last year, but rather than paying their 35 percent tax bill, Harkin claimed they only paid 1.8 percent.

Student Debt Burden Growing

The Pew Center for Research found there has been a trend over roughly the past decade of students taking out larger loans and more students borrowing to pay for college. In 2008, 60 percent of all college graduates had borrowed, compared with 52 percent in 1996.

Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time in 2010 and the indebtedness of collegiate students is expected to top $1 trillion for the first time in 2011.

The Obama administration did implement new rules for federal loans, to forgive student debt after a certain number of years. The income-based repayment forgives remaining debt if one pays 15 percent of their income for 25 years; 10 years, if they work in public service.

And already, the President is using Republican proposals to scale back student aid as he begins to campaign. Instead, Obama has told college students he would tax the wealthy and trim the Pentagon’s budget.

Harkin’s comments are certain to rankle environmentalists and many in the oil industry, who have criticized a recent decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to allow higher blends of ethanol in newer vehicles, citing greenhouse gas concerns and ethanol’s impact on engines.

“What’s missing from this bill is any mention of biofuels and what biofuels can contribute to our energy independence in this country,” Harkin, one of the most outspoken proponents of biofuels, said on the Senate floor Monday.

He continued:

So, while I most certainly will vote for a motion to proceed because I think we should proceed to it, I’ll say at the outset that major changes will need to be made to this bill before it can earn my support on final passage.

Harkin also argued that expanding ethanol use would be cheaper than encouraging natural gas vehicles because it would require fewer infrastructure investments.

But natural gas, every station would have to put in a big compressed tank under a lot of pressure. That would then have to be transferred to a compressed tank, a very strong tank in your car. There would have to be some sort of nozzle to do that. It wouldn’t just be having to put gasoline in an engine. So a whole new infrastructure would have to be built to accomplish this. No new infrastructure would have to be built to put biofuels in your car.

Harkin specifically called for provisions in the bill that would increase the number of flex-fuel vehicles and expand the number of biofuels fueling stations and pipelines.

The Fellinger claim may now act as a lever through which change to the process might finally come and bring sick people and their families redress. In a letter sent Monday, Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin asked the Department of Labor to reopen the Fellinger case and send it to an independent third party for review.

“I believe that this case unfortunately illustrates flaws in the administration of the … program both with regard to the qualification of the District Medical Consultants (DMCs) and with overall adjudication of similar claims,” Harkin says in the letter. District medical consultants are the doctors contracted by the Department of Labor’s Office of Worker’s Compensation Program to offer opinions on disputed claims.

“This is good,” said Bo Fellinger of the Harkin letter. “It’s a clear encapsulation of everything that has happened thus far. I think this is going to be very helpful.”

The Iowa Independent’s Laura Millsaps has owned the story of the Fellinger case and she reports the developments today:

“I’m thrilled about this letter,” said Dr. Laurence Fuortes, Fellinger’s medical advocate and director of the University of Iowa Former Worker Medical Screening Program. “It very eloquently and humanely states a rationale behind reopening this claim. I hope Shelby Hallmark is willing and able to meet the request.”

Fellinger worked for the Ames Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill., and the Fermi National Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., for periods from 1967 through 1972, where he would have been exposed to a host of toxins, including beryllium, thorium, and asbestos. He first became ill with pulmonary fibrosis in 1993, and contracted esophageal cancer in 2003. While still alive, he applied for compensation for his illnesses through the EEOICP. The first letter denying his claim arrived on the day of his death in 2008, and has been repeatedly denied since then.

Two weeks ago, Fellinger’s widow received yet another blow to her hopes to reopen the case in the form of a letter from the policy branch chief of the EEOICP, Michael Chance.

Despite providing the opinions of four doctors, including one who is a pulmonary pathologist with Mayo Clinic, the Department of Labor found that the medical opinions, “do not constitute new medical evidence which would allow for reopening,” Chance’s letter to Fellinger said.

This latest in a long string of denials was also mailed to Fuortes, who contacted The Iowa Independent about Chance’s letter last week.

“This case has devolved into a pissing match,” Fuortes said. “This case has nothing to do with medical science or justice.”

Colorado’s Mark Udall has been a champion in the Senate for the sick workers and their families. Udall introduced the Charlie Wolf Nuclear Worker’s Compensation Act in March of last year. It is designed to level inequities in the Department of Labor compensation program.

“I share the frustration of claimants who are waiting for improvements to the compensation program — every moment this bill sits literally impacts the lives of people who are very sick,” Udall said in May. “I’ve been working on this for many years, and the slow pace has me very frustrated.”

Critics say Harkin shoulders some of the responsibility for Udall’s frustrations. Harkin was one of the authors of the original legislation creating the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Program in 2000. He is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), where the Charlie Wolf Nuclear Worker’s Compensation Act has been stalled for more than a year.

With his engagement in the issue and the Fellinger case in particular, Harkin would now seem to be the biggest single motivator on the issue.

Got a tip? Freelance story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.