Congressional negotiators reached an agreement Sunday night on a $1
trillion-plus spending bill that would fund the federal government
through September. Both the House and Senate are expected to vote on the
measure by the end of the week, when the latest stop-gap bill expires.
The deal contains a provision restoring year-round Pell Grants—also
known as “summer Pell”—which were cut due to cost in 2011. The bill
calls for the same level of discretionary spending on the Pell Grant
program this year. Because of mandatory funding increases, the maximum
Pell grant award will increase $105 to $5,920 for the 2017-18 academic
year.
Other federal financial aid programs would see either increases or
level funding under the bill. The measure would increase funding for
Federal TRIO Programs by $50 million and GEAR UP by $17 million.
The bill also includes a $2 billion funding boost for the National
Institutes of Health (NIH). Both the House and Senate had proposed
significant increases for NIH in their original FY 2017 appropriations
bills passed in committee last summer.
Other research programs also are slated for increases under the new
measure, including $368 million for NASA; $56.8 million for the Office
of Science and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy at the
Department of Energy; $62 million for the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and $8.7 million for the National Science
Foundation.
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) would each receive a $2 million increase in
funding over FY 2016.
President Trump has proposed
cutting funding for NIH by 20 percent in his “skinny” budget plan for
FY 2018 released in March, and requested eliminating NEH and NEA in
their entirety.
ACE and other higher education associations have been advocating
since the FY 2017 budget cycle began for strengthening the Pell program,
the nation’s most important investment in higher education, as well as
for protecting other aid programs and the federal government’s
investment in research (click here (273 KB PDF) and here (271 KB PDF) for the most recent letters on these issues).
“The budget agreement released today demonstrates strong, bipartisan
support for the students and families our colleges and universities
serve, and for the advancement of medical and scientific research,” said
ACE President Molly Corbett Broad in a statement
on the spending plan. “We applaud congressional leaders for their clear
commitment to these important priorities . . . There is no better
investment in our country’s future prosperity than expanding federal
student aid and research funding and we look forward to the swift
enactment of this measure.”