The Senate will vote on House amendments to the HCR bill, including one that I posted about yesterday.
This is a GREAT move by House Democrats to save the Pell Grant program for needy college students, millions of whom were set to lose all or part of their Grant, which typically covers only PART of the cost of education. Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi and all the others who worked hard to make yesterday happen. [We all saw what Pelosi could do once she got a House majority in 2006. It's great to see her work now becoming law on HCR]
WaPo has the link.
The Senate, hopefully, will continue the good work done by House Democrats:
Legislation hailed by supporters as the most significant change to college student lending in a generation passed the House on Sunday night.
The student aid initiative, which House Democrats attached to their final amendments to the health-care bill, would overhaul the student loan industry, eliminating a $60 billion program that supports private student loans with federal subsidies and replacing it with government lending to students. The House amendments will now go to the Senate.
By ending the subsidies and effectively eliminating the middleman, the student loan bill would generate $61 billion in savings over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Most of those savings, $36 billion, would go to Pell grants, funding an era of steady and predictable increases in the massive but underfunded federal aid program for needy students. Smaller portions would go toward reducing the deficit and to various Democratic priorities, including community colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and caps on loan payments.
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"You're taking billions of dollars in wasteful subsidies to student lenders and banks, and you're recycling that money on behalf of families and students to help pay for their college education," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
We've still got a lot of work to do at the state level to stop Republicans like Arnold in California, or any one of the other Grover Norquist-wannabees, from trying to drown public education in a 'bathtub' so that only wealthy students can afford college.