Democrats Promise Tax Breaks for Tuition

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As Democrats unified behind Sen. John Kerry last week, they also adopted a platform that calls for tax breaks for tuition and an end to the ban on federal funds for embryonic-stem-cell research.

The need to open the doors of higher education wider was mentioned many times in speeches over the four nights of the convention, usually when speakers were linking a college degree to the party's plans for an improved economy and better jobs.

One of the biggest ovations in the hall came when Sen. John Edwards, the vice-presidential candidate, told the crowd that he was "blessed" to be the first person in his family to go to college and that "to help your child have the same chance I had," a Kerry administration would provide a tax credit covering as much as $4,000 of tuition for four years.

The new tuition tax break is part of a party platform that includes proposals for reining in college costs and taking ideology out of the making of science policy.

Although the platform's domestic agenda, including its plans for higher education, is fairly brief and lacks many specifics, delegates to the convention who work at colleges said the document provided a guide that illustrates the differences between Mr. Kerry and President Bush.

"Bush seems to be rewarding a few at the expense of many," said Linda Harbrecht, marketing-communications manager at Lehigh University, who was here as a Kerry delegate from Pennsylvania. "I think Kerry would be a better president at providing more opportunities for more people to participate in higher education."

Noting that college tuition rose by 35 percent from 2000 to 2003, the platform describes Mr. Kerry's plans to "make college affordable for every college student." It promises federal student aid that is "faster and simpler to get" and that eliminates "wasteful subsidies for lenders."

Keeping Tuition Down

The $4,000 tax credit could be payable as refunds, even to people who pay little or no tax, unlike the federal Hope and Lifelong Learning tax credits on tuition.

The platform also calls for "federal fiscal relief to states as an effective tool to ... prevent harmful tuition and tax increases." In recent years, as budget shortfalls have forced most states to cut spending, funds for higher education have often ended up on the chopping block. To make up for the loss of state support, many public colleges and universities have raised their tuition.

In a campaign appearance in June, Mr. Kerry laid out plans to give states access to $10-billion in federal funds for the next two years to spend exclusively on higher education, as long as they promised not to raise tuition at public colleges faster than the rate of inflation. The federal dollars would be divided among the states based on their percentage of American students at public colleges. After two years, Mr. Kerry would work with states to establish measures to reward colleges that kept tuition down.

If adopted, a proposal to peg tuition to the Consumer Price Index, a common gauge of inflation, is likely to make some college officials nervous. Last year tuition at public four-year colleges went up an average of 14 percent. The Consumer Price Index is hovering around 3 percent.

"The first argument you're going to hear is what you use as the measure," said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a research group based in California, who would rather link tuition increases to the rise in average incomes since "affordability is all about what people can pay."

Spending on Research

In what is likely to be a response to complaints from many academic scientists that President Bush has delayed or junked scientific findings that do not support his policy priorities, the platform dedicates several planks to the party's belief in federal spending on scientific research, specifically to battle disease. "The Bush administration has put ideology over science, skewing information about everything from women's health to scientific research," the platform reads.

In particular, the platform says that the president's policy on limiting federal funds for research on embryonic stem cells is "wrongheaded" and would be reversed under a Kerry administration. The issue kept resurfacing in speeches at the convention last week, often bringing loud cheers from delegates in the hall.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York mentioned it, as did U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, whose district includes the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where the first human embryonic stem cells were isolated, in 1998. And in what many Democrats considered a coup, Ron Reagan, the son of the late Republican president, dedicated an entire speech to the subject one night.

"I am not here to make a political speech," Mr. Reagan told the crowd, "and the topic at hand should not, must not, have anything to do with partisanship."

But the matter of stem-cell research continues to divide the two major political parties. Stem cells are undifferentiated and have the potential to develop into any type of cell in the body. Some scientists believe research on the cells could eventually yield cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, diabetes, and possibly Alzheimer's.

The research has become entangled in the intense debate over abortion because scientists must destroy embryos left over from in vitro fertilization to obtain colonies, or "lines," of stem cells -- a procedure that opponents regard as immoral. As a result, President Bush, who opposes abortion, has taken a hard stand on the matter. In 2001 he issued an order that offered federal funds only for research using cell lines that existed at the time, and banned federal support for all other stem-cell studies.

Democrats here at the convention hoped that their platform, which advocates reversing the federal ban, would make a difference with some voters this fall. In advance of Mr. Reagan's speech, Democratic officials released a poll showing that 69 percent of voters, including 60 percent of Republicans, support stem-cell research.

"You have to remember that people who have relatives who are sick want to help them in any way, shape, or form," said Gaynelle Wethers, a delegate from New York and the director of multicultural affairs at Nazareth College of Rochester. "And those same people are voters."

In his speech, Mr. Reagan stopped just short of endorsing Mr. Kerry. "Whatever else you do come November 2, I urge you, please, cast a vote for embryonic-stem-cell research," he said.

The problem, though, may be explaining the issue to voters. Many Democrats here admitted that the matter is not a top priority for most people, many of whom do not understand the nuances of the subject. Indeed, Mr. Reagan spent much of his speech giving the delegates a science lesson.

Demetrios Giannaros, a delegate from Connecticut and a professor of economics at the University of Hartford, said Mr. Reagan had achieved exactly what Democrats needed to do this fall: explain the subject in simple terms. Within his delegation, Mr. Giannaros said, Mr. Reagan's speech caught the attention of several people for whom the debate over stem cells was murky.

"It's hard to understand and comprehend how we can stop scientific progress that can help millions around the world," he said. "It's incomprehensible to me that the current administration is taking this position."

On other higher-education issues, the platform that delegates approved last week called for:

• Revising portions of the USA Patriot Act, including the library provision. That provision requires librarians to hand over readers' records and "any tangible thing," like library computers, to FBI agents who present a search warrant.
  
  
• Beefing up enforcement of civil-rights laws, including the gender-equity statute Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
  
  
• Providing continued support for affirmative action in the wake of the two U.S. Supreme Court decisions last year that supported the limited use of race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.
  
  
• Enacting a version of the line-item veto that could be upheld in court to make it easier to "root out pork-barrel spending."