The subcommittee for labor, health and human services, education and related authorities of the US appropriation committee, Shelley Moore Capito, R.V. The proposal includes a reduction in the maximum Pell Grant Award. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Washington President Donald Trump would like to shorten almost $ 1,700 from the Maximum Pell Grant Award in 2026, which would leave the subsidy for students with low income at the lowest level for more than a decade.
The proposal would have devastating effects on the affordability of the university and enhance the costs for states because they would have to fill out the lack of federal dollar, say educational lawyers and experts.
The application – part of the President of the President of the President in the 2026 financial year – is in the congress, in which vital members of both parties react to the proposal with alarm.
“I do not want to reduce the Pell scholarship,” the US Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican in West Virginia and chairman of the subcommittee for the funds of the Senate for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Authorities, told Standroom.
“I’m worried about it – I hope that we will be determined,” she said.
The opposition of Capito, whose body writes the annual legislation for the financing of the educational department, is unlikely that Trump’s wish can enter the upcoming legislation.
The Pell Grant is a state subsidy that helps students with low income for college and is the basis for student aid in the USA.
Catherine Brown, Senior Policy and Advocacy Director at the National College Affizing Network said that the cut was “absolutely devastating” and found that “College is already not within reach”.
Financing gap
The Pell Grant program sees according to the non -Partisan Congress budget office. The administration has cited the deficiency As a reason to reduce the maximum award.
The request calls for the reduction of the maximum pell scholarship for the price of 2026-2027 from $ 7,395 to $ 5,710. The last time the maximum Award status Under this level, the 2013-2014 price year landed at $ 5,645.
Trump’s budget request for the 2026 financial year contains a total of $ 12 billion of $ 12 billion in the educational department, as he and his administration try to reduce the agency and to change the federal role in education dramatically.
Democrats: Cut would be “crazy”
The Democrats have raised sturdy opposition, while even the Republican Chairman of the Sub -Committee on Home Center for Home Court, which supervised the financing of the educational department, was not transferable to pursue Pell Grant’s cuts.
“We would like to make sure that (Pell Grants) serves the people they need,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt from Alabama when he was asked for concerns he has on the proposed cut.
Aderholt said that he heard “a lot” from his voters about the proposed reduction and it is “certainly something we can see”.
In the meantime, the leading Democrats were quickly broadcast the proposed cut in the expenditure for the house and the Senate’s expenses.
Rep. Rosa Delauro, a rank member of the Full House Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee for educational expenses, described the reduction of almost 1,700 US dollars as “crazy”.
“People won’t be able to do it, and that is the tragedy of what they do here is to reduce all the constructs that are there to offer people in particular with public education and a way to success,” said Connecticut Democrat.
“They take the federal government’s work, they lower the Pell scholarship that tells me that they want to destroy public education,” said Delauro.
The budget request suggests reducing $ 980 million for work study financing of $ 980 million and employers are obliged to pay 75% of the hourly wages, with the government contributing 25%.
The program If students with financial needs give part-time employment to cover the college costs.
Senator Tammy Baldwin, a member of the Senate Senate, said that she was “strong” of the proposed reduction.
The Wisconsin democrat said she also realized that “there is a threatening lack of pell financing that we have to address.”
“I hope that we will be able to work together,” said Baldwin.
Proponents, experts weigh
Proponents and experts in university formation also grant the alarm for the proposed reduction, both about the damage to the access of students with low income for university formation as well as the effects on states and universities.
“This would only tighten this gap and reduce millions of students from the persecution of post -conceptual education or put them on a different way,” said Brown with the National College Afersment Network.
Katharine Meyer, a scholarship holder for Governance Studies at the Brown Center on Education Policy of the impartial Brookings Institution, described the proposed decline as “really unprecedented”.
She added that if the Pell grant is smaller, she had to spend more for university formation, which is a challenge for state officials who may deal with other cuts in the support of the federal government in the budget reconciliation package that the Republicans try to pass.
“The states do not necessarily have the flexibility to spend more money if they have budgets that they have to compensate for, and they confront with other federal restrictions, including the potential costs for health care, depending on what is happening with the negotiations for the budget supply in health care,” she said.
Capito also said that a reduction in Pell would go out to the state level.
At the institutional level, Meyer pointed out that a state who has a smaller bucket for university education but wants to prioritize financial aid is the money acquired for universities.
“Then the institutions will not be able to spend so much for their resources,” she said. “You will not be able to carry out capital improvement campaigns that are often very necessary.”
Connections to reconciliation calculation
The Republicans of the House also proposed vital changes to the justification of Pell Grant as part of the separate “large, beautiful calculation of the GOP legislators”. The legislative package would reduce billions of dollars of federal programs to compensate for the costs for other parts of the Trump Day Code, including the extension of tax cuts 2017 and the enhance in border security financing.
The GOP legislators exploit the elaborate reconciliation process to move a package with uncomplicated majority votes in each chamber through the congress and to avoid the 60-vuncitis threshold of the Senate, for whom a cross-party person is generally necessary.
The house hand over his version of the reconciliation package at the end of May. This measure contained a provision that would enhance the minimum number of loan lessons to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant Award from 12 per semester to 15. The move would save 7.1 billion US dollars of federal expenditure over 10 years, the Congress household office estimated.
This up-to-date admission requirement is not included in the draft of the proposal for the reconciliation package that Republicans published in the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor and Pension in June.
