Alyson Klein is reporting that Chris Dodd is probably staying with the banking committee, which leaves the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) chair to either Tom Harkin or (if he doesn’t take it) Barbara Mikulski. While the rest of the world (rightly) worries about Max Baucus’s control of/chokehold on health insurance reform, the HELP committee is where Ted Kennedy held sway. For those who doubt the influence of the Kennedy family on federal education policy, ask yourself who started substantial federal funding in both education for students with disabilities and research into special education, who created the Special Olympics, and who insisted on annual tests in ESEA originally, as well as who helped shepherd many education bills through Congress in the 1990s and in this decade. The most influential single politician in education policy in the 20th century may have been Lyndon Johnson, but the most influential family was definitely the Kennedy clan.
So there are some mighty big shoes to fill, and as important as those shoes, some interesting relationships to negotiate. As many people have said for months regarding health care policy, Kennedy had enormous negotiating credibility, and whoever replaces him will have to work very differently, in addition to having different priorities and ideas. I am going to assume that some version of health insurance reform will pass this fall, and the primary question about education policy mid-fall will be whether higher-ed policy or K-12 policy is more urgent, and how those issues play out vis-a-vis other legislative priorities.
If Harkin decides to drop the leadership of Agriculture for HELP, he is going to be a tough negotiator for the White House on NCLB/ESEA. Part of that comes from what I gather is a close relationship with Iowa’s teachers, and part is probably from his status as a rural-state legislator (and wanting to protect federal funding that would normally go to Iowa in formula-driven processes but might be diverted in a discretionary program). In the end, I suspect he’ll stick with Agriculture because he is from Iowa, but even if he is not the HELP chair, he’ll still exert influence because of his seniority and the way the Senate works.
I don’t know much about Mikulski and education policy, except that from her senate issues site, her focus is on higher education (and that is consistent with whatever vague impression I’ve had). If she were HELP chair, she’d probably push the higher-ed priorities, probably leading to K-12 issues (NCLB/ESEA) being left for late in 2010 or even 2011.
This just in: the Baltimore Sun’s Paul West is reporting on the paper’s political blog that Harkin is hopping from Agriculture to HELP. Wow. If that report is true, the USDOE’s legislative liaison job just got about three times more interesting.