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WASHINGTON, DC -- Representative George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, issued the following statement today at a committee meeting to consider record budget cuts to the nation’s student aid programs.
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It is wrong to make low- and moderate-income college students and their families bear the burden of misguided policies and misplaced priorities that have run up the budget deficit, but that’s what the bill before us today would do.
Student financial aid programs are not a slush fund for Congress to raid whenever it wants tax cuts for the wealthy, handouts for its corporate cronies, no-bid contracts for the well-connected, or pork for special interests.
But the legislation before us – the Republican Raid on Student Aid – represents the largest cuts in the entire history of federal student financial aid programs. It represents a significant step backwards when it comes to creating college opportunities for all qualified students. And it presents a false choice between fiscal responsibility and college affordability.
We have an obligation to future generations to be fiscally responsible. That’s why Democrats will today offer ideas to make college more affordable without costing students or taxpayers an extra dime – and without adding to the huge budget deficit. Fiscal responsibility and college affordability are not mutually exclusive.
Let’s just be clear about how Congress and the Bush Administration turned a surplus into overwhelming seas of red ink: they did it in part by pushing trillion-dollar tax cuts, many of them for the wealthiest Americans. And they are about to make things even worse by adding another $70 billion in tax cuts, most of which will benefit the richest 3 percent of all Americans.
Today, the Republicans who run Congress are proving once again how misplaced their priorities are by demanding up to $15 billion in cuts to the nation’s student aid programs.
As a result, rather than seizing an opportunity to make college more affordable for students, this committee will make it more expensive. For example, students will wind up paying as much as $5,800 more in interest costs over the life of their student loans because of this Raid on Student Aid.
This is exactly the wrong direction for our nation. More than ever, the health of our economy rests on having a highly-skilled and well-educated workforce. College access is the key to America remaining strong in the face of an increasingly competitive global economy.
Yet we know that, if we don’t act to make college more affordable, millions of American high school graduates will forgo college altogether.
The Congressional Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance says that financial barriers will prevent 4.4 million high school graduates from attending a four-year public college over the next decade, and prevent another two million high school graduates from attending any college at all.
As a result, by the year 2020, the United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 12 million college-educated workers, directly threatening America’s economic strength.
It’s outrageous that I still have to make this case in 2005, several generations after the G.I. Bill showed how important college access could be to growing the U.S. economy, but let me say it clearly: financial barriers should never, ever prevent a qualified student from going to college.
The Democratic alternative that we will offer today expands educational opportunities. It provides a guaranteed boost to the maximum Pell scholarship for low- and moderate-income students to $5,100 by 2010, from $4,050 today, and it makes student loans more affordable. And by cutting wasteful spending on corporate subsidies, we can accomplish all of this without costing taxpayers or students an extra dime and without adding anything to the budget deficit.
Even with these budget cuts, this Congress will actually make the budget deficit worse. That’s because, as fast as this committee can pass one bill slamming low- and middle-income families with higher education costs, other committees plan to pass Republican bills larded up with tax breaks and corporate handouts.
This committee should help make college more affordable, not put college further out of reach for millions of qualified and deserving students.
I urge the members to vote against the Republican Raid on Student Aid.
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