A look at the Senate’s higher education spending proposal

Higher Ed Dive

Natalie Schwartz

July 31, 2023

Dive Brief:

• The maximum Pell Grant for fiscal year 2024 would increase by $250 — to $7,645 — under a bipartisan spending proposal passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week.

• The committee voted 26-2 to recommend a discretionary spending budget of $79.6 billion for the U.S. Department of Education, which would provide the agency with flat funding in line with current spending levels.

• Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee two weeks earlier proposed just $67.4 billion for the Education Department, representing a roughly $12 billion reduction from current spending levels. The cuts would include keeping funding for the Pell Grant program flat and eliminating certain student aid programs.

Dive Insight: 

Although the House and Senate proposals for Education Department funding differ widely, they both fall well short of President Joe Biden’s proposed budget. In March, he had pitched $90 billion for the agency, including boosting the maximum Pell Grant award to $8,215.

That plan didn’t have much chance of getting through a deeply divided Congress, where Republicans dominate the House, and Democrats hold only a narrow majority in the Senate.

But hopes for elements of Biden’s blueprint to pass were further dashed when congressional lawmakers cut a deal in June to raise the debt ceiling limit, averting a potential economic disaster. Under that agreement, lawmakers flat-funded federal education spending for fiscal 2024 and limited increases to 1% for fiscal 2025.

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