President Bush's 2006 budget proposal released Feb. 7 eliminates some important higher education programs and fails to adequately fund others.

Although his budget calls for a modest increase in Pell Grants, this will be financed by the elimination of the Perkins loan program that helps middle-income students. The administration also calls for an an end to the Perkins loan-forgiveness program for those in the armed forces or the Peace Corps. If implemented today, Bush's plan would leave close to 700,000 students from 1,800 different institutions without Perkins loans.

The president's proposed increases for Pell Grants—raising the maximum grant by $100 a year for the next five years, to $4,500 by 2009—does not come even close to the $5,100 he pledged for the program during his 2000 campaign.  

The Bush budget will also end important initiatives that help prepare low-income students for college, such as Upward Bound, Talent Search and Gear Up.  Also slated for revisions are the Work-Study and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Funds, which provide financial help to needy students.

With the exception of the Pell Grants, Title I and special education, the budget level-funds or cuts most education programs. Overall funding for the Department of Education has been cut by $530 million over last year's budget, and 48 education programs totalling $4.3 billion have been eliminated altogether.

The budget represents "a huge reversal in the federal government’s commitment to education at a time when new, rigorous requirements for students and teachers need to be met," said AFT president Edward J. McElroy in a statement.

Aside from education, President Bush's budget also calls for broad cuts in other domestic spending programs. This includes limitations on food stamp eligibility; an end to a program that provides housing, education and employment services to the poor; energy assistance to help people pay their heating bills; and measures that reduce Medicaid payments to states.

The budget "turns its back on children, the elderly and the most vulnerable while shifting the burden of assisting them to cash-strapped states," said McElroy.

Meanwhile, the administration is proposing to make the tax cuts permanent and to even create new tax cuts, adding to the nation's already soaring deficit. The president opts to exclude from his budget many of the out-year costs associated with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and tsunami relief aid, and omits the fiscal impact of making his first-term tax cuts permanent or converting a portion of Social Security to private accounts.  [Julie Berry, Trish Gorman]

February 8, 2005