Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois introduced H.R.5285, The Training for Realtime Writers Act of 2019, in the House of Representatives. This standalone piece of legislation seeks to reauthorize the Training for Realtime Writers Grant Program, a competitive grant program that was previously supported by Rep. Kind and authorized under the Higher Education Act of 2008.
The bill is a critical piece of legislation, as the Training for Realtime Writers Grant Program has not received funding since 2015. If passed by Congress, the legislation will allocate $1.5 million per year for five years to court reporting and captioning programs across the country. Funds are to be used for the educational training and recruitment of new realtime writers.
In addition to that standalone bill, two education bills currently in the House of Representatives, H.R.4674 College Affordability Act and H.R.4646 Improving Access to Higher Education Act of 2019, also seek to reauthorize and fund the Training for Realtime Writers grants, as well as other important educational programs. Now that there are three bills in the House of Representatives that seek to fund the Training for Realtime Writers grants, NCRA has three opportunities in the next legislative session to attain the crucial funding necessary to train the next generation of new captioners.
“I am looking forward to watching our bill progress through the legislative process and would like to thank all of our 2019 NCRA Leadership & Legislative Boot Camp attendees who advocated before their members of Congress for the grant program in May,” said Jocelynn Moore, NCRA Director of State Government Relations. “Your hard work resulted in the introduction of three bills within the United States Congress!”
