Senate-Approved Plan May Lead
To Increases in Education Budget
By Charles Dervarics

Offering some hope to an increasingly gloomy budget picture, the Senate in late March voted to add $7 billion to education and other domestic programs next year. The move could lead to a long-sought Pell Grant increase.

Under the plan, senators would borrow the $7 billion from future appropriations, but sponsors say the move is justified given the long-term funding freezes that have hit many of the targeted programs. The bipartisan plan was approved by a 73-27 vote.

“The passage of this amendment has sent the president a powerful message that these misguided priorities will no longer be tolerated by the American people or by Congress,” says plan co-sponsor Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. He added that while the plan would only undo cuts made during the past two years, it does represent an effort to shift the debate more toward domestic priorities.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., says the Senate should use the money to boost Pell Grants, which have not seen an increase in four years.
“Our students are graduating with so much debt, it is like their first mortgage,” she says. Twenty years ago, Pell covered 80 percent of the average cost at a four-year public college. The figure today is considerably less.

Lawmakers also need to expand tuition tax breaks for middle-class families “who aren’t eligible for Pell Grants but still can’t afford college,” she says.

Without the new $7 billion, education and other programs will face significant cutbacks, says Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a sponsor of the initiative.

“This account has been decimated since fiscal year 2005,” he says. “We have gone beyond the fat, beyond the muscle, beyond the bone and into the marrow.”

“The education cuts proposed by Congress and the president went straight to the bone, and this amendment would help lessen some of that pain,” adds Reg Weaver, president of the National Education Association. Weaver called it “a positive sign” that Republicans and Democrats joined together in the effort.