Before he can think about improving U.S. education, fixing the nation’s health-care system, or helping to repair the global environment, President-elect Barack Obama may have several more pressing priorities.
Among them: finding a replacement for the space shuttle and ensuring the continued availability of television.
That’s the advice of the Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, which issued a list today of what it considers the 13 most urgent issues facing Mr. Obama and the newly elected Congress in the coming year.
The GAO’s list consists largely of issues involving national security and foreign policy, such as defense readiness and preparing for large-scale health emergencies. Other items making the GAO’s priority list include food safety, financial oversight, the space shuttle, and the transition to digital television.
But the 13-item to-do list doesn’t mean the GAO is suggesting Mr. Obama completely ignore education and other issues in his first year in office. In a separate list of priority issues categorized by federal department, the GAO says the new president will need to do more to ensure continued student access to federally subsidized student loans, including guarding against abuses by colleges and loan companies.
“Some of the practices of these schools and lenders,” the GAO said, “may have resulted in students and parents paying unnecessarily high interest rates on loans because of improper lender activities.”
The 13 items on the GAO’s most-urgent list aren’t necessarily the most important longer-term items to be faced by the Obama administration, said J. Christopher Mihm, managing director for strategic issues at the GAO. They instead reflect deadline-oriented needs that will require the president’s most immediate attention upon taking office, to avoid giving the public a negative first impression about his competency, Mr. Mihm said.
“We would never argue that health care is less important or climate change is less important or education policy is less important than the conversion to digital TV,” he said. “It’s the implications for the larger agenda.”
Source: Paul Basken