Friday, November 11, 2005

A Bit of Good News

The Raid on Student Aid was postponed yesterday after Republican lawmakers admitted they didn't have the votes to pass the $51 billion in cuts to social programs, which includes $14.3 billion in cuts to student loan programs.

Seattle P-I : Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., said the budget bill "is still a work in progress" and he still opposes some of its provisions. But he acknowledged that resistance to ANWR drilling unified the GOP moderates in challenging the leadership. "One thread that held us together on this was ANWR. We knew if we could hold together on ANWR all these other provisions would be subject to much closer scrutiny,"

Inside Higher Ed: Several lawmakers noted that they’d heard from students or college officials concerned about the cuts. Way to go, guys!

And now, the bad news: There's one more week in the session, meaning the Higher Ed Act has little or no chance of being reauthorized this year (The last "five-year" reauthorization was in 1998.) Pell grants will continue to be underfunded.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. I'm confused by the process. If the Act is not reauthorized "this year," what is the next possible date by which it could be authorized? Thanks.

Anya said...

The Senate is planning to finish its work for 2005 at the end of next week, which doesn't give it much time to get to the HEA. A bill has already been passed to extend the HEA through 12/31/05. The HEA will presumably be back up on the calendar in January 2006, at which time the battles will continue. The HEA "expired" in 2003 originally.