\n<\/p>\n
Senate Republicans are planning to protect the Pell Grant program, keeping the maximum grant award at $7,395 for the coming academic year, despite the Trump administration\u2019s proposal to lower it to $5,710. <\/p>\n
The rejection of Pell Grant cuts at a key committee markup Thursday is just the latest rebuke from congressional appropriators as lawmakers in both chambers have appeared wary of President Trump\u2019s plans to shutter offices, gut programs and generally reshape the federal government.<\/p>\n
In addition to protecting $22.5\u00a0billion for Pell, the GOP also spared TRIO, campus childcare subsidies and numerous other programs that Trump had proposed zeroing out. It also set new staffing standards for the recently gutted Department of Education, increased funding for medical research by $400\u00a0million and rejected the National Institutes of Health\u2019s attempt to cap indirect research cost reimbursements at 15\u00a0percent. The legislation also restricts other efforts at NIH to change how grants are awarded, though Democrats say \u201cmore needs to be done to protect NIH research programs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over all, the Department of Education is going to receive $79\u00a0billion and the NIH will get $48.7\u00a0billion. In comparison, Trump had requested $66.7\u00a0billion for ED and $27.5\u00a0billion for NIH.<\/p>\n
Committee chair Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said she was proud of the legislation that advanced Thursday, calling it a bipartisan effort to fund the health and education of American families. She noted that \u201cthe appropriations process is the key way that Congress carries out its constitutional responsibility for the power of the purse.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Democrats, while overall supportive, noted that they\u2019ve had to make a number of compromises already and warned that Trump could still attempt to make unilateral changes moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are not the bills I would have written on my own, but nonetheless they represent serious bipartisan work to make some truly critical investments in our country and families\u2019 future,\u201d said Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat and ranking member of the committee. Still, she added, this is only half the battle. \u201cThe fact of the matter is we have an administration right now that is intent on ignoring Congress, breaking the law and doing everything it can without transparency to dismantle programs and agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has repeatedly frozen or cut grant funding, largely declining to spend money that Congress appropriated\u2014moves that Murray and others have decried as illegal. More recently, the administration waited weeks before sending critical funding to states that supports after-school programs, migrant education and adult education. About $7\u00a0billion was affected, and colleges had to scramble to find a way to fill the funding gaps before Trump\u2019s Office of Management and Budget finally released the money last week. Meanwhile, colleges are still waiting for the Education Department to open up grant applications for millions in funds.<\/p>\n
At NIH, grant cancellations and other changes have slowed the flow of research funding to colleges. Earlier this week the administration briefly paused all new grant awards, infuriating congressional Democrats. Over all, since Trump took office, the biomedical research agency has cut more than 4,000 grants at 600 institutions totaling somewhere between $6.9\u00a0billion and $8.2\u00a0billion.<\/p>\n
Beyond the grant cuts, the Trump administration recently clawed back money that had been allocated to public broadcasting, using a legislative process called rescission. The president is expected to propose a second rescission package in the months to come, this time targeting education dollars. Democrats have warned that using rescissions to change the budget could endanger talks on fiscal year 2026 spending.<\/p>\n
So while higher ed lobbyists typically look to the Senate\u2019s spending plan as the framework for what to expect in the final bill, Trump\u2019s willingness to test the limits of executive power complicates the picture.<\/p>\n
Still, the Senate\u2019s proposals for the NIH as well as the Education Department, which funds a number of programs at the previous year\u2019s level, is a victory for advocates who spent months warning that Trump\u2019s budget cuts would be devastating for students and research.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not surprised by what we\u2019ve seen. The Senate often works more bipartisanly together, and that was reflected in the markup today,\u201d said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. \u201cIn this political environment, flat funding is a win. It\u2019s not ideal, but it is us being mindful of the current realities that we\u2019re in and the financial constraints that we\u2019re in, especially with the upcoming rescissions package that\u2019s supposed to include education.\u201d<\/p>\n
That said, Guillory noted that he\u2019s bracing for deeper cuts from the House, which has yet to release its education and health spending proposals. <\/p>\n
\u201cI could see the House having a bit more influence [than most years past], as they have had more influence so far this Congress,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Democrats did try to amend the bill in order to establish guardrails that would retroactively address Trump\u2019s funding cuts and protect the fiscal year 2026 appropriations from a similar ambush.<\/p>\n
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, proposed reinstating all college grants frozen or retracted since Jan.\u00a028, with the exception of those pulled due to financial malfeasance. He highlighted how, in Chicago, the cuts have halted infant heart defect research and then ran through a lengthy list of other medical projects affected in other senators\u2019 districts. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis could happen to any of your states\u2019 research centers. It could hurt any of your families,\u201d he argued. <\/p>\n
Later, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, one of the few Democrats who did not support the bill, sought an inspector general report into whether the Department of Education\u2019s civil rights office is properly following statutes when investigating discrimination complaints and issuing discipline. <\/p>\n
The Department of Education\u2019s OCR, along with other agencies, has launched dozens of investigations into alleged civil rights violations at colleges and universities. Those inquiries haven\u2019t followed the required statutory procedures, but colleges have lost funding and faced other consequences.<\/p>\n
Murphy proposed withholding OCR funding until the appropriations committee received the IG\u2019s report.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy worry is simply that the president is going to ignore the will of Congress that is present in this legislation,\u201d he said. \u201cIf this does become normalized\u2014if the president of the United States gets to deny funds to universities because they don\u2019t like political viewpoints of the student body or of the faculty\u2014that is a Pandora\u2019s box that is hard to ever again close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican who leads the education and health subcommittee, shot down both proposals, calling Murphy\u2019s amendment \u201ccontrary to the point of the [OCR] office\u201d and Durbin\u2019s \u201ctoo broad.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every administration has the prerogative to implement new goals and priorities,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senate Republicans are planning to protect the Pell Grant program, keeping the maximum grant award at $7,395 for the coming academic year, despite the Trump administration\u2019s proposal to lower it to $5,710. The rejection of Pell Grant cuts at a key committee markup Thursday is just the latest rebuke from congressional appropriators as lawmakers in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[7525,562,280,496,1468,1314,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-13854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-appropriators","9":"tag-cuts","10":"tag-dept","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-reject","13":"tag-senate","14":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}