Jerry Nadler Asks Witness: How Will Federal Research Programs ‘Gutting’ Impact Society, Humanity?

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During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) questioned Julie Margetta Morgan, President of The Century Foundation, about cuts to federal research programs.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Morgan, before I begin my questions, can you please say your

00:09answer to Mr. Ice's question on market size? Yes, I believe that market size is relevant

00:15here to the question of where we should be focusing our attention. The vast majority of

00:19students in America do not attend Ivy League colleges, and they don't attend colleges who

00:25are affected by the competitive forces that the committee is discussing here

00:30today. We need to be focused on open access colleges and community colleges who

00:35take their cues from the state legislators and federal legislators who provide

00:40sufficient resources for their budgets. Thank you. For many, college is a good

00:45investment that ensures greater earnings over a lifetime and an opening to the

00:48middle class. However, the cost of tuition at many schools is too high, closing the

00:53door to families who cannot afford the higher the high sticker price. Despite

00:58this affordability problem and the growing disparity between the richest few and the

01:02many who are seeing rising prices in all parts of the market, the Republicans

01:06reconciliation bill takes direct aim of student loan programs and other critical

01:10student aid programs. The Trump administration has also taken aim at

01:14students and universities while pulling critical research funding and kidnapping

01:18students and academics off the street. Dr. Morgan, how does the Republican budget

01:23impact low-income students and the public's access to higher education going forward?

01:27The Republican budget is going to have drastic negative impacts on the cost of

01:33higher education for most students in this country. As I said in my testimony, it's

01:38going to cut Pell Grants for millions of students, making them foot the bill for more of

01:43college. It's going to make student loans more expensive to repay on the back end. It caps the

01:50the amount of federal student loans that people can take on, but not the amount of

01:54tuition, meaning that more people are going to have to take on private student

01:57loans to cover that gap. And how does higher education support the country in our

02:03economy generally? Higher education is incredibly important to our economy and

02:07it serves a number of purposes. Number one, those open access schools and

02:11community colleges that I referred to are educating people to become doctors, sorry, to

02:16become nurses, nurse practitioners, HVAC repair people, electricians, you know, the

02:21people who serve our communities every day and make our economy robust. But our

02:26educational institutions also provide funding for or receive funding to do

02:31research that provides innovations that are incredibly important to our

02:36society. They make us safer, they make us healthier, and they make our country more

02:40competitive. Well, following up on that, how does the gutting of federal research

02:44programs at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and

02:48Prevention, and the National Science Foundation impact not just the

02:51institutions, but society and even humanity? I think we're all going to feel the

02:56impacts of these cuts for a long time. We're not going to be developing the drugs

03:00that make us safer and healthier in this country. We're not going to be

03:05developing the innovations that help keep us competitive and power

03:09manufacturing within our country. So it's going to have a really big impact on us as a

03:14whole. I also think that it's going to move more innovation to the private

03:18sector, which means that we're really only going to be developing the

03:21innovations that are profitable and not necessarily the ones that are best for

03:25for the public as a whole. And most of our drugs are not initially profitable

03:30without federal research. Dr. Morgan, the United States has been the

03:36beneficiary of foreign students coming here, being educated here, the best and the

03:42brightest. And staying here, it's one of the reasons for our scientific

03:46supremacy. What is the effect of the Trump administration's hostility to foreign

03:52students and denials of visas and even revocations of visas? What would be the

03:57effect on on our economy and on our scientific supremacy?

04:02Yes, I think that first of all, we have to view this attack on foreign students at

04:07American colleges as part of a larger punitive effort to bend certain colleges to

04:12the administration's will. So this is really part of an effort to kind of turn the

04:17screws in any place that the administration can to bring colleges around to a set of

04:22What would be the result? Oh, sure. So I think the result of this these of this

04:29change to to admission for international students is going to have an effect on our

04:34country's ability to bring in minds from all across the world and benefit from

04:39their academic excellence to provide and you know an opportunity for those

04:44certain students to take part in our democracy and learn our values. In short, it

04:48promises to shift scientific primacy from the United States to China. Would you

04:53agree with that? I totally agree with that. Thank you. I yield back.

04:58The gentleman yields back. We now recognize the

04:59The gentleman yields back. We now recognize the

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