Pell Grants Cut

Higher Ed Watch is reporting that increases in Pell Grant funding isn't all we thought it was cracked up to be:

Last night, Democratic Congressional leaders, who came to power promising substantial increases in spending on student aid, passed through the House a compromise omnibus spending bill for 2008 (the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008) that will CUT the maximum Pell Grant by $69. That's right. In September, Congress celebrated a new maximum Pell then slated to be $4,800 between base and added mandatory funding. Today, it's slated to be $4,731. That might not sound like a big difference, but it translates into almost a $300 million cut in financial aid for needy students.

In an earlier 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations conference agreement that Congress passed in November, lawmakers proposed going in the other direction and increasing the maximum Pell Grant award by $125, from $4,800 to $4,925 for the 2008-2009 academic year. See table below. But President Bush, unhappy with the overall level of spending in the bill, vetoed that measure and Congress failed to override him. Congress is now slated to meet the President's level and is doing so in part by reducing the maximum Pell Grant. But of course Congress didn't have to meet the President's level by cutting the maximum Pell Grant to do it. They could have pulled back on other spending priorities, like say for earmarks. But they chose not to go that path.

Now in fairness to the Democratic Congress, despite the reduction in the maximum Pell Grant level as of September 2007, the actual 2008 Pell Grant maximum will still be $421 (as opposed to $490) more than last year's level. That's far short of the Democrats' "Six for '06" campaign promise to increase Pell by $1,000, but it's a step in the right direction and nothing at which to sneeze.