LRAP
April 13th, 2007 at 9:04Earlier this week, S. 442 (the “John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007″) [GovTrack | OpenCongress | Thomas] made it out of the Judiciary Committee and is bound for the Senate floor. This bill would fund a $25 million federal loan repayment assistance program (LRAP) for new lawyers working in prosecutors’ and public defenders’ offices—up to $10,000 a year for up to six years. Don’t put off writing the letter if you feel strongly about this; help on LRAP advocacy is available on the ABA’s website. Also worth noting: H.R. 916 (companion to S. 442; still in committee), S. 359 (also in committee), and Moloney v. Commissioner (a recent U.S. Tax Court decision holding that some LRAP programs create taxable income for the beneficiary).
April 26th, 2007 at 20:33
[…] Junior Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (a Democrat) has introduced S. 1167 (”the Civil Legal Assistance Attorney Loan Repayment Act”) [GovTrack | OpenCongress | Thomas], which would create a $10 million loan repayment assistance program for legal aid attorneys. The bill text tracks the current prosecutor/public defender LRAP bills (S. 442 and H.R. 916) pretty closely, except that the legal aid one would only offer $6,000 in assistance annually, while the prosecutors and PDs would get up to $10,000 every year. Also, S. 442 has already made it out of committee and has a bipartisan set of co-sponsors; Harkin has no co-sponsors yet on S. 1167. Posted in n.b. | Leave a Reply […]
May 19th, 2007 at 12:40
[…] Now, some of you might be asking: well, then how come, Mr. Usefulinfo, you have been using this blog to call attention to and support congressional bills that would create federal loan repayment programs for public interest lawyers? I support those bills because, in the context of federal spending policy, they’re better than a hundred other subsidies. Among my choices for how my government is going to spend our money, LRAPs for prosecutors, PDs, and legal aid attorneys seem almost like a good idea. […]