Education
House Democrats on Wednesday angrily questioned why the Agriculture Department took months to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren would no longer be automatically eligible for free meals under a proposed rule aimed at cracking down on food stamp eligibility standards.
USDA posted a report late Tuesday night estimating that about 982,000 low-income students would no longer automatically qualify for free meals under the department's proposed rule to limit so-called broad-based categorical eligibility in SNAP.
Oregonians who signed up for the Public Service Student Loan Forgiveness program are finding it's not very forgiving.
Tens of thousands of students nationwide took advantage of the government program but only about one percent have been approved to have their loans forgiven.
Bonamici said, "People across Oregon and our country took jobs in public service and planned their lives around it, only to discover it was an empty promise. It's been devastating to so many people."
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici says the current impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump may draw most of the public's attention, but the House is working on other issues affecting people's lives.
As an example, Bonamici said, a House subcommittee she leads has produced a bill (HR 4334) to extend federal spending authority under the Older Americans Act, which was originally passed in 1965.
Hundreds of students visited the Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center Research & Development facility in Scappoose on Friday, Oct. 4, meeting with potential employers and learning about educational opportunities in the trades on Manufacturing Day's second anniversary.
A 2018 Department of Ed report on the status of the loan program revealed that "of the approximately 29,000 applications that have been processed, more than 70% of them have been denied."
Today, despite efforts to fix the program, that denial rate is even higher.
While the impeachment of Donald Trump was at the top of mind at Gearhart's congressional town hall Monday, U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici fielded questions about the federal deficit, foreign policy and her position on equal rights.
But overall it was the topic of civility that dominated evening, the fifth of sixth town hall events in the state.
U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici said she would likely vote to impeach President Donald Trump based on the evidence that has emerged so far about his appeals to Ukraine to investigate a political rival.
"In the past, I've expressed concerns about policy differences with this administration," Bonamici said at a town hall Monday night at Gearhart Elementary School. "But when we learned the president was compromising our national security and raising national security issues, that's when I said my constituents and Americans deserve to get the facts."