00:07And just very, very quickly for Mr. Pocan's education, is professional wrestling a business?
00:18Sir, it very definitely is a business.
00:22So you ran a business.
00:23Okay, just so that you're aware of that.
00:25Anyway, let me ask you a couple of questions.
00:29I don't disagree with my colleagues on the right.
00:31I've been saying I agree with what Mr. Elsie said.
00:34Education, and I have no problem with trying to move much of this education back to the states.
00:40Had a couple of superintendents tell me a couple of years ago that their problem was they got 5% of their funding from the federal government and 95% of the rules came from the federal government.
00:48But there are some successful programs that we want to maintain.
00:52You said in your statement that you encouraged all of your children to go to post-secondary school, that they needed to continue their education to be successful.
01:02You said that you evaluated and looked at these programs and wanted to get rid of those that were ineffective.
01:08And in the skinny budget, you specifically said, trio and gear up are a relic of the past when financial incentives were needed to motivate institutions of higher education to engage with low-income students and increase access.
01:21I'd like to see some of those studies and evaluations because every one that I've seen says it's one of the most effective programs ever.
01:26In fact, when we had Secretary Spelling here 20 years ago, they tried to put all these programs together and just send them out to the states.
01:35She said they had studies that showed that they were not a very effective program.
01:39And I asked her for a copy of those studies.
01:41It's 20 years ago.
01:42I'm still waiting because there are no studies out there that show that it is ineffective.
01:46It is one of the most effective programs in the federal government.
01:48These are for, you know, one of the best programs in the history of education and most meaningful has probably been the GI Bill.
01:58We took veterans from World War II and gave them opportunities to go to college.
02:03This is the GI Bill for low-income minority communities.
02:08And it's supported by many, many members of Congress.
02:11We have about 800,000 low-income potential first-generation college graduates.
02:16And I don't know if you've ever gone and talked to any of these students.
02:19These are people that had never thought of going to college because nobody in their family had, nobody in their community had ever done that.
02:25We've got a problem in Indian Health Services trying to get doctors and dentists to go out on reservations.
02:31The only way you're going to educate you, the only way you're going to do that and solve that problem is when Native American children go to college,
02:38go on to medical school, go on to dental school, and come back to their reservation to serve their people.
02:42That's how you're going to solve it in the long run.
02:44So can you speak to me how the department arrived at this funding level and how you plan to ensure that TRIO remains accessible to the students who rely upon it?
02:55Well, thank you very much.
02:56And I understand that there are many services that are served.
03:01I mean, TRIO started out as three programs.
03:03It's now about eight.
03:04And it first started when there were first generation of students who were going to college for the first time.
03:13And I agree with you.
03:14There are a lot of parts of TRIO that talked about those students and what their possibilities could be and interested them.
03:21I did see in one example, TRIO recently, that one child was brought on board and talked about going to college.
03:30But part of the TRIO program was taking them to Disney World at that time.
03:33So I'm not sure that all the expenses in TRIO should be there.
03:38I think TRIO, you know, those monies are going to be going out, you know, for this program for this year.
03:44So we are looking at all of the programs.
03:47The need for TRIO, I don't think, is nearly as strong because there are outreaches from colleges now into local communities.
03:54And there should be more of the universities and secondary education levels reaching into those communities.
04:01They should be talking to them about college.
04:04But I think they should also be talking to them about other ways that they could have skills,
04:09that they could support, whether it's the tribal nations that you were talking about or whether it's their community.
04:15As I mentioned a little earlier, it might have been before you came in,
04:19that I think we need to reimagine and look at education differently in our country.
04:23I think we need more work-based projects, teaching in our middle schools and high schools to prepare people to get into the economy.
04:31I mean, we kind of made, we focused on college and degrees and we kind of made trade skills,
04:38hey, that's something that you go into if you can't really make it at college.
04:41We need this workforce.
04:43Yes, we do.
04:43We need this workforce.
04:44So let's train a lot of those different kind of programs.
04:47Let's give them skills that can make it available for them to go to work right away and be in the economy.
04:52Then maybe they will also put themselves through school.
04:54Before you eliminate TRIO, though, I need to see what those programs are that you're proposing that we're going to change them to.
04:59Because this is the most important program for low-income people who had never thought of any,
05:04you know, you gave the example of one individual out of 800,000.
05:08The program is highly successful.
05:10I'd like to say other government programs could learn from this program, frankly.
05:14And I would like to know if we're going to change it, how it's going to change and how we're still going to have access to those kids.
05:20And I understand that the department has not yet released the continuation awards for the TRIO Upward Brown program,
05:27even though those grants expired on May 31st.
05:30Could you tell us where we are on those awards?
05:32Yeah, I believe that they will be going up by July 1.
