The House Budget Committee’s Plan to Slash Federal Student Financial Aid: A Tweetable Summary

Originally posted on August 8, 2017 to TICAS.org
By Lindsay Ahlman

Last month, the House Budget Committee released their fiscal year 2018 budget resolution, which sets Congressional funding priorities for the coming fiscal year starting October 1, 2017, and provides a fiscal blueprint for the next decade. This resolution lays out a plan even more extreme than the education cuts proposed by the Trump Administration’s FY18 budget. In addition to including well over $200 billion in cuts to education funding over the next ten years, the resolution also initiates the fast-track reconciliation process that would require at least $20 billion of these education cuts be made this coming year.

Recent threats to college affordability and access are persistently coming from multiple directions: the FY17 spending agreement already raided $1.3b from Pell Grants, the President’s budget proposed deep cuts to federal education spending, and the House Appropriations Committee separately agreed to raid $3.3 billion from Pell Grants in FY18 at the same time this budget resolution was introduced. However, the House Budget plan is a uniquely devastating attack on federal support for higher education.

The budget resolution’s massive cuts to both the Pell Grant and student loans would magnify the already heavy burden of debt on students, families, and the economy…. 

You can read the full article and access Tweet-able summaries on TICAS.org/blog