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House
Markups Cut $14.5 Billion from Student Aid The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has spent much of the week on mark-ups of legislative language in an effort to generate $35 billion in savings, as it has been instructed to do under the FY 2006 budget resolution (H. Con. Res. 95). On Wednesday, by a 22 – 19 vote, the Committee approved language relating to the Higher Education Act of 1965 that would cut $14.5 billion from the program over the next five years. Among the cuts are a permanent closure of 9.5 percent student loan subsidies, the elimination of floor income earnings, increases in lender-paid fees, and reductions in lender insurance and collection costs. Supporters of the language said that it improves efficiency and reduces waste in student loan programs. “After more than a decade of tuition increases that have far outpaced the rate of inflation and growth in family incomes, it has become clear that blindly increasing federal student aid is doing nothing to solve the challenge of skyrocketing college costs,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the Subcommittee on 21st Century Competitiveness. Detractors, including Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the Committee, said that the language would make low- and moderate-income college students and their families bear the burden of paying for the budget deficit. “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,” Miller said. The Committee continued its markups on Thursday, when it considered the "Family Education Reimbursement Act of 2005", relating to elementary and secondary education of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. For
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