Student aid safe �� for now: Congress cancels vote on budget cut package

A CONTROVERSIAL GOP PLAN TO CUT funding to student aid programs was stalled in November by a combination of public outrage and lack of congressional support.

Twenty-two Republicans crossed the aisle to vote with unanimous Democrats against the cuts. Although GOP leaders vowed to try again in coming weeks, their sinking public approval numbers (just 29 percent according to ah October USA Today/ CNN/Gallup Poll), public outrage over the cuts, and growing concern about 2006 congressional elections may mean the votes will remain hard to find.

The proposed cuts were part of a larger budget reconciliation package before Congress, but higher education leaders and the public weren't buying it. Although President Bush had asked for a $50 billion across-the-board budget cut, critics argued that simply canceling tax cuts and trimming pork barrel spending--such as Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' infamous $450 million "bridge to nowhere"--would go far toward easing the problem.

The entire education allocation, they argue, represents just one-half of 1 percent of the total entitlement budget.

Yet, student aid programs are caught up in a "perfect fiscal storm" of deficit reduction, tax cuts, and hurricane relief efforts, says David Warren, co-chair of the Student Aid Alliance, a coalition of some 60 organizations representing 16 million college students. "The house education committee has been asked to make the largest single contribution to deficit reduction among all of the appropriation programs in the country--larger than defense, larger than homeland security, larger than interior," he says. "These fiscal and budgetary efforts are being introduced on the backs of students."

Warren calls the effort a "raid on student aid." "Those dollars in the program are for the purposes of student loans in one form of another, as a subsidy to the students or a subsidy to the banks and lenders," he says. "Those monies are being raided out of the student loan program and put to tax cuts and to deficit reduction and otherwise. I think there is no other way to characterize that."

Although the aid programs escaped the chopping block--for now--they weren't all that healthy to begin with. College enrollment is projected to increase by 14 percent over the next 10 years, yet federal and state aid is declining, with schools being forced to pass on the cost directly to students. The Pell Grant, which in 1986 could be counted on to pay for as much as 98 percent of an average college tuition, now covers less than 25 percent of tuition, and hasn't been increased since 2001. And although the Perkins Loan Program was not cut this year, as previously threatened, universities received far less federal funding to put into financial aid awards.

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