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WASHINGTON, DC -- By a vote of 216 to 214, the U.S. House of Representatives this afternoon narrowly approved a Republican-backed bill that cuts $39 billion out of critical health, education, and other services for American families, including a $12 billion cut to the federal student aid programs, in order to finance multi-billion-dollar tax breaks for the wealthy. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of the bill.
When coupled with those tax breaks, today’s legislation – which Republicans misleadingly claimed was meant to help reduce the budget deficit – will actually increase the deficit. Miller said services in Contra Costa and Solano counties would be adversely affected (see below).
“Congress has just enacted the largest raid on student aid in history in order to give more money to the wealthy, even while millions of American families are struggling to afford the rising cost of college,” said Representative George Miller, the senior Democrat on the House education committee. Miller led the fight against the cuts to student aid programs.
Most of the savings generated from the student aid programs come from two sources: first, from raising the interest rates that parents pay when they take out federal loans to finance a child’s college education; and second, from continuing the practice of forcing student and parent borrowers to make excessive interest payments on their education loans.
Instead of passing this raid on student aid, Miller said that Congress should have adopted Democratic ideas for making college more affordable without costing taxpayers a dime or adding to the budget deficit. Specifically, Miller said Democrats wanted to eliminate excessive subsidies paid to lenders in the student loan industry, and use the savings to make loans more affordable and increase Pell grant scholarship for low- and moderate-income students.
In his State of the Union speech last night, President Bush said, “We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people – and we’re going to keep that edge.” Miller said today that the President and leading Washington Republicans have already begun to walk away from that promise by passing this budget-cutting bill.
“America is number one in the global economy, and we can stay number one if we make aggressive investments in education, innovation, and future generations,” Miller said. “President Bush said as much last night, but today Washington Republicans showed that they have no credibility on the issue.”
The cuts will be felt hard in Miller’s own community—where tuition and fees for community colleges in Contra Costa County have nearly tripled between 2002 and 2005. Yet the Republican passed bill will add new fees and costs for students wanting to attend these colleges. The nearly 3,300 Pell grant recipients in Miller’s home district will receive no boost to their grant, despite the fact that the maximum grant is now worth $900 less, when adjusted for inflation, than it was in 1975-76.
Miller’s district will see even more cuts in important services such as Head Start early education, child support enforcement, special education and health insurance to low-income families, among other things. Contra Costa County will lose $2.3 million and Solano County will lose $4.0 million in child support enforcement funds in 2008 alone. Because of the Republican-led cuts, just next year, Contra Costa will lose an estimated $450,000-$1.3 million in federal funding for child welfare services and Solano will lose an estimated $150,000-$450,000.
For more information on the impact of budget cuts in California, visit:
http://www.house.gov/georgemiller/pdfs/Jan06pressconferencebackground.pdf
For more information about the Democratic Innovation Agenda, visit:
http://www.housedemocrats.gov/news/librarydetail.cfm?library_content_id=557
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