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Category: Higher Education

House Democrats Unveil HEA Legislation

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To counter the House Republican proposal to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA), the House Democrats today will introduce their own version of a reauthorization bill.  The Democrats’ package, the Aim Higher Act, will serve as their messaging document moving forward.  It is not expected to move through the legislative process.

A number of documents related to the legislation are available:

  • a detailed summary of the bill produced by the Democrats on the Education and the Workforce Committee is available here;
  • the committee Democrats have also produced a “fact sheet”; and
  • a press release about the measure is available here.

The House Republicans’ bill, the PROSPER Act, was passed by the Education and the Workforce Committee late last year but has not yet come to the floor for a vote as the committee chairwoman has not been able to generate enough support for its passage.

Labor-HHS Spending Bill Clears House Committee

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After an all-day markup, the FY2019 House Labor-HHS-Education bill was cleared by the Appropriations Committee last night. The committee’s adoption of the bill means that 11 of the 12 spending bills have cleared the House Appropriations Committee; the Senate committee has cleared all of its bills.

The 13-hour markup was contentious at times, with heated debates on a number of issues, including child separation.  Of the roughly 50 amendments offered and debated during the session, a significant number of them focused on child separation practices at the border.

Although the bill has now cleared the committee process, it is unclear at this point whether it will see floor action in the near future.

A copy of the bill is available here and the accompanying report is available here.

 

 

Appropriations Process Continues to Move Forward

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The FY2019 appropriations process continued to move forward today.

The House agreed to its version of the Defense spending bill by a vote of 359 to 49.  The detailed report for the bill is available here.

In the Senate, the full Appropriations Committee adopted its version of the Labor-HHS-Education and Defense spending bills.  While most of the details from the two bills are not yet available, the bills’ highlights have been posted by committee here and here.

 

 

Senate Bill Calls for Bigger NIH Increase

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The Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee reported out this morning its FY2019 bill. While most of the legislation’s details are not yet available, Chairman Roy Blunt (R-MO) highlighted during his remarks the $2-billion increase in the bill slated for NIH.  He also called out the proposed Pell Grant maximum of $6,195 and the continuation of the year-round Pell.  A press release about the highlights of the bill is available here.

The bill is slated to be taken up by the full Appropriations Committee on Thursday, when the panel will also consider the Defense bill.

More details will be posted as they become available.

Progress and Delay on Labor-HHS-Education Bill

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The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to take up today its FY2019 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill.  The legislation funds, among other agencies and programs, those that support biomedical research and student financial aid, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Pell Grants.  The committee markup, however, has been postponed until after the July Fourth recess. While Republicans are citing scheduling issues as the cause of the postponement, Democrats are claiming that the delay is due to Republican concerns about amendments that will likely be offered by Democrats to address family separation issues during the markup session.

As it stands, the current version of the legislation, the details of which are available here, would hold the Pell Grant maximum steady at $6,095 while funding the program at $22.475 billion overall.  With respect to other financial aid and higher education programs, Work Study would receive $1.13 billion while TRIO and GEAR-UP would be funded at $1.01 billion and $360 million, respectively.  SEOG would also bevlevel funded at $840.0 million.

International Education-Title VI programs and the Institute for Education Sciences would be held level at $72.1 million and $613 million, respectively, by the House bill.

On the biomedical research front, NIH would see an increase of $1.25 billion under this bill and would receive $38.33 billion.  The Health Resources and Services Administration would receive $6.54 billion under this bill.

On the other side of the Hill, the Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to take up its version of the FY2019 bill later this morning.  The full Appropriations Committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation on Thursday, when it is also expected to consider the Defense spending bill.  The Office of Federal Relations will report on the details as they become available.