(January 2010) The COHEAO Annual Conference took place outside of Washington, DC with a series of informative sessions on a variety of topics. The sessions are available at www.coheao.org. In addition, several dozen COHEAO members made visits to their Representatives and Senators in Congress to talk about Perkins Loan proposals and to call for modification of the President's proposals to include school-based servicing, the payment of the in-school interest benefit and continuation of loan cancellations.

Congressman Tim Bishop (D-NY) spoke to the attendees about the upcoming student lending legislation. He indicated that he remains supportive of making some modifications to the House-passed version of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act in the Perkins Loan area. Specifically, he supports allowing schools to have the option of servicing the new Direct Perkins Loans and he supports some sort of institutional match. He also remains supportive of restoring some of the in school interest benefit. He had proposed having the institutions cover the in-school benefit instead of providing a match, but he now realizes that this would rapidly become too costly for institutions to manage.

Bishop was pleased with some aspects of the SAFRA legislation (the House-passed student loan bill), including the elimination of the FFEL Program and the increased funding for Pell Grants, community colleges and other priorities. Regarding Perkins Loans, he also was pleased that lending will remain in the control of campuses and that existing campuses will be "held harmless" so that they will receive at least as much Direct Perkins funds in the future as the five-year average of what they currently receive.

Bishop pledged to continue working with COHEAO on the legislation as it moves forward and to work for improvements. However, he did not know what would happen next on it, given the question of whether a student loan and health care bill will be combined in order to pass the Senate.

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), also spoke to the conference to provide a perspective from the Republican point of view. A freshman member of the House, Thompson has not worked as closely on Perkins Loan issues as Bishop in the past, but he provided an interesting perspective on being a member of Congress and was quite entertaining in his comments. He noted that one of the big events of the year in his Congressional district, one of the most rural in the country yet also the home to several universities, will take place next week when Puxatawney Phil, the famous groundhog, checks to see if he can see his shadow.

Thompson expressed strong opposition to the SAFRA legislation's proposal to eliminate the FFEL Program and predicted that in the end the legislation will prove to be a mistake.

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