{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://foxx.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=364983", "Rep. Foxx Tries to Balance Needy Students, Tax Dollars in Education Debate", "2013-12-19", "2013", "2013-12", "Republican", "House", "NC", "Virginia Foxx", "F000450", "foxx.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Rep. Foxx Tries to Balance Needy Students, Tax Dollars in Education DebateBy: Renee Schoof \n    \n        \n            \n        \n    \n  \n\u00a0WASHINGTON \u2014 Rep. Virginia Foxx says she can empathize with struggling low-income students. She used to be one.\n  \nFoxx describes herself as \u201csomebody who was extraordinarily poor and had a tough time, really tough time, getting my degree.\u201d As an undergraduate, she got married, worked full-time, had a baby, and went to school part-time. She typed other students\u2019 papers at night for 35 cents a page. It took seven years to graduate. As one of the most conservative members of Congress, known for provocative and polarizing commentary, Foxx said she feels she must balance her belief in less government and lower taxes with a desire to channel federal financial aid money to students who need help. Now as Congress prepares to reauthorize the most important law about the federal government\u2019s role in higher education, the Republican lawmaker from Banner Elk, N.C., is playing a major role. In preparation for congressional debates over higher education policy, Foxx has chaired a series of hearings about college affordability as chairwoman of the higher education subcommittee of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. \u201cFrom the beginning of my life I\u2019ve known that education was the key to get out of poverty,\u201d she said in an interview earlier this month, just before the House recessed for the holidays. \u201cAnd so I\u2019ve always been dedicated to helping people like that.\u201d Foxx advised many low-income students while she was an administrator and sociology professor at Appalachian State University in Boone and as president of Mayland Community College in Spruce Pine. \u201cOnce a week some woman \u2013 and it was always a woman \u2013 some woman would come in my office and say to me, \u2018You don\u2019t realize how this has changed my life,\u2019\u201d Foxx said, briefly tearing up. \u201cAnd it would often be women who had dropped out of high school to get married and have a family and then in most cases they lost their jobs and they\u2019d gone back to school.\u201d Foxx was in charge of three programs for disadvantaged students at Appalachian State: Breakthrough, for African-Americans; Upward Bound, for high school students; and Special Services, for college students. The programs helped low-income students who were the first in their families to go to college, but who didn\u2019t meet regular admissions requirements. The early version of the Pell grant, which is now the centerpiece of federal student aid, began when she worked there. Today about 9 million students receive Pell grants, at a cost of about $30 billion annually. The most recent of the affordability hearings, on Dec. 3, was about Pell grants. \u201cI was literally on the front lines with these programs,\u2019\u2019 Foxx said. \u201cSo I know how important Pell is to many, many students. I think it\u2019s appropriate that we focus hardworking taxpayer money\u2026on students who need financial aid and who want to improve themselves and will ultimately \u2013 hopefully \u2013 pay back to the culture through their efforts. But I do think we need more accountability in that area\u201d. What\u2019s needed, she said, is better allocation of the aid and better counseling for students. Molly Corbett Broad, a spokeswoman for higher education as president of the American Council on Education, knows Foxx well from the days when Broad was president of the University of North Carolina and Foxx was a state senator. \u201cWe all see her endeavoring to strike the right balance that fits with her, not only her history and personal experience, but also those in the community where she grew up,\u201d Broad said. \u201cShe tries very hard to balance that knowledge with her own personal political ideology.\u201d Foxx, 70, was born in the Little Italy neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City, but her family moved to the Linville Falls community near the Blue Ridge Parkway when she was 6. Her father was a hairdresser and construction worker, her mother a restaurant cook and hotel maid. The family grew most of their own food. She attended Lees-McRae College, then a junior college, and Appalachian State before she got married during her junior year. Foxx transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she earned her degree. Her husband, Tom, went to UNC-Chapel Hill in 1961, and they were young and poor together, she said. \u201cHis parents were totally illiterate,\u201d she said. \u201cHis father died when he was 10.\u201d As a student, Foxx worked as a secretary, graded papers, waited tables and was a weaver at the Crossnore Weaving Room, in Crossnore, N.C., where she\u2019d learned traditional weaving at age 12. She went on to receive a master\u2019s degree in teaching and sociology from UNC-Chapel Hill and a doctorate in education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. First elected to Congress in 2004 from North Carolina\u2019s 5th District, Foxx has a rating from the American Conservative Union of 92 percent. The latest annual lawmaking rankings by the National Journal, a nonpartisan monthly magazine that covers government and politics, says that out of 435 members of the House, only 61 have a more conservative voting record than Foxx. The congresswoman has also been known for making divisive comments. In 2009, speaking on the House floor, she said \u201cwe have more to fear\u201d from the health care bill passing \u201cthan we do from any terrorist right now in any country.\u201d Foxx also caused an uproar that same year when she said that Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who in 1998 was tortured, tied to a fence and left to die, was killed in a robbery and not because he was gay. She called the account a \u201choax,\u201d but law enforcement authorities at the time said that Shepard\u2019s assailants had lured him from a bar pretending to be gay. Shepard\u2019s mother was in the House gallery in 2009 when Foxx made her remarks. The congresswoman subsequently apologized. A hate crimes act named for Shepard became law that year. The education hearings, however, haven\u2019t been known for controversy. Foxx has made her views known, but opened the floor to a wide array of other opinions as well. In the first hearing that she chaired in the House college affordability series, Foxx said that faced with the budget deficit and national debt, \u201ccontinuing to increase federal subsidies to supplement the growing cost of education is simply unsustainable.\u201d Topics of the 12 hearings so far have included student loans, Pell grants, and ways colleges have found to reduce costs, such as tests students can take to get credit for past learning in school or on a job. Work on the new higher education law hasn\u2019t started, and it\u2019s too early to say what specific changes may be ahead for Pell grants. Foxx said that Pell grants were a good use of money for \u201cstudents who need financial aid and who want to improve themselves and will ultimately, hopefully, pay back to the culture through their efforts.\u201d But she added that she also wanted to see better procedures in how the funds are allocated and better counseling for students. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa of Texas, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said Democrats liked the hearings and found them balanced. \u201cWe hope that our Republican colleagues will join us in a shared commitment to passing a bipartisan Higher Education Act reauthorization that keeps students at the center of the conversation and makes a high-quality education more affordable and accessible for all,\u201d he said. \u201cThere has always been a significant bipartisan involvement\u201d in the Higher Education Act\u2019s reauthorization, Broad said. \u201cSo far that\u2019s exactly what we have seen under the leadership of Chairwoman Foxx.\u201d Foxx also has \u201cstood up to resisting unnecessary regulations, and in that sense she\u2019s been a champion for us,\u201d she added. Carrie Warick, director of partnerships and policy at the National College Access Network, an advocacy group, said the hearings had allowed all viewpoints to be aired on how to address college affordability. She said her group hopes the federal government changes rules to allow better data to be kept on Pell grant recipients. Today the government doesn\u2019t track them systematically. Foxx had a hand in that. In 2008, when the Higher Education Act was last revised, her amendment banned the Department of Education from setting up the kind of student recordkeeping that would allow the government to build a database of Pell grant recipients, out of concerns for student privacy, Warick said. She said one of her group\u2019s biggest frustrations was to hear calls for greater efficiency with the Pell program, since it\u2019s impossible to know how efficient it is without the data. Differences aside, Foxx said she\u2019s encouraged by the hearings. \u201cI think it\u2019s been exciting to see some of the innovations that are going on in higher education that will make education more affordable,\u201d she said.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://foxx.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=364983"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7053231820464134, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}