When Congress convened immediately after the election, thevictorious Republican majority showed that it was the boss. HouseDemocrats were essentially locked out of the process. House SpeakerDennis Hastert said he would allow no bill even to be consideredunless it had support of the majority of Republicans. Democraticvotes did not count.
The Republican majority then expressed its values. Its first actwas to change its rules so that a member indicted on a felony chargecould remain leader of Republicans in the House. Have Republicansgone soft on crime? With three of his aides already indicted forillegal use of political funds in Texas, Republican Majority leaderTom DeLay, the true boss of the House, anticipates that he may benext. So just in case, they changed the rule against indicted leadersstaying in power. The same folks who champion zero tolerance for kidshave no problem making an exception for one of their own.
Then Republicans passed -- in one 1,000-page, 14-pound, $388billion bill -- all the appropriations they failed to consider beforethe election. That allowed them to pack the bill with billions in"earmarks," pork projects for individual members, even while hackingaway at the environmental protection budget.
Hidden in that bill was a lump of coal for America's mostdeserving college kids. Republicans passed a provision that will endup eliminating the college scholarships -- Pell grants -- for 90,000students, and cutting them for more than 1 million.
The kids who get Pell grants come from families that make lessthan $50,000 a year. These kids have to patch together loans, jobsand grants to afford a college education. The Republican majorityvoted to cut the funds to a million of these kids into order to save$300 million from a $2 trillion annual budget. These are the samelegislators who will vote to extend the tax breaks that put about $30billion a year into the pockets of America's millionaires.
On the Web page of the Republican chair of the EducationCommittee, John Boehner, is a statement that claims we have not cutPell grants. But that is what might be called a "true lie." Sure, theamount of money being spent on the program has gone up, since morekids qualify for it. But the grants to the kids are getting cut.First, they continue to lose ground to soaring college tuitions. Pellgrants used to cover over 80 percent of the average tuition forpublic four-year colleges. Now they cover about half that much. Sothe kids or their families have to go further into debt or findadditional part-time jobs to make up the difference. A lot of kidssimply can't do it and more and more end up dropping out of school.The president promised to increase the level of Pell grants when heran four years ago and again in this election. But that promise hasbeen broken.
Now the Republicans authorized the education secretary to raisethe "expected annual payment" by the kids or their families. That isa way of cutting grants without admitting it. Boehner's statement istechnically correct, but the college-student sons and daughters ofAmerica's working families will find out just how misleading it iswhen their grants are cut.
The reality is that Pell grants should be going up, as thepresident promised, not down. The entire country has a stake in thenext generation's getting the best education it can. For minorityfamilies, a huge stake is put on scraping together the funds so thata deserving child can get the education that opens the door ofopportunity.
The Republican majority finds this a less worthy cause than taxbreaks going to millionaires. Ironically, I suspect if you polledmillionaires, the vast majority would be happy to roll back theirtaxes if they knew the money would be used to help deserving kidsstay in college.
America's prosperity was created in large part after World War II,when the country, deeply in debt because of the war, chose to providea GI Bill to reward the GIs with the money for advanced education ortraining. An entire generation went to college, and made Americabetter.
The one thing we know about the right-wing cuts in Pell grants is,that by closing the door to education to working kids, they arevoting to make America weaker. They voted to allow an indictedlawmaker to lead them, but the vote on Pell grants was the biggestcrime of all.
No comments:
Post a Comment