The purchasing power of Pell Grants for low- and moderate-income college students stands at its lowest level in more than 40 years, with the maximum grant covering just 29 percent of the cost of attending a four-year public university or college. Unless President Trump and Congress act, that decline will likely accelerate in the coming academic year when the grant’s automatic inflation...
off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Non-Defense Discretionary Funding Increases Under Bipartisan Deal Yet Remains Below Earlier Levels
February 7, 2018
Funding for non-defense appropriations would remain below its level of eight years ago in inflation-adjusted terms.
House Bill Effectively Eliminates Defense Cap, Puts Off Non-Defense Funding
December 18, 2017
As the congressional session draws to a close this week, policymakers face the important tasks of enacting appropriations bills for fiscal year 2018 that began on October 1, extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and other expired health programs, and providing vital disaster relief for communities hard hit by hurricanes and wildfires. But House Republican leaders are...
Sequestration Deal Should Avoid Harmful Offsets, Divide Funds Equitably
December 8, 2017
Policymakers should raise the appropriations caps for 2018 and beyond to keep them from holding funding well below what’s needed to address important priorities. But policymakers must also ensure that any provisions to offset the cost of cap increases don’t cause harm — for example, by reducing health coverage or worsening poverty and hardship — and that the additional funding is...
House GOP Appropriations Plan Doesn’t Meet National Needs
September 6, 2017
The House is scheduled this week to take the next step to implement the Republican majority’s 2018 appropriations plan, which pairs a $70 billion increase above the 2017 level for defense with an $8 billion cut to non-defense programs. That unbalanced plan would fall far short of meeting national needs, as we...
House-Senate Conference on Health Bill Likely Just as Secretive as Senate Process
July 27, 2017
Now that the Senate has rejected two measures to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is promoting a so-called “skinny repeal” with the sole and explicit goal of advancing health legislation to a conference with the House, which...
2018 Funding Without a Map
June 20, 2017
The House Appropriations Committee has begun to consider its 12 appropriations bills to fund the government in fiscal year 2018, but without first unveiling or approving a plan to allocate total appropriations among the 12 bills. Thus, the committee is considering individual bills without first setting its overall priorities and debating how funding for one bill affects the funding available...
Trump Budget Would Cut Non-Defense Programs to Half Their 2010 Level
May 23, 2017
The Trump budget would radically cut non-defense discretionary (NDD) programs — the budget category that funds education, job training, medical research, and other investments that spur greater economic growth and higher living standards. The proposed cuts to NDD programs, which have already...
Budget Relief Should Go Equally to Defense and Non-Defense
January 25, 2017
The House reportedly may soon consider a bill to fund the Defense Department for the rest of fiscal year 2017, and it may be because the Republican majority wants to give defense some relief from the sequestration budget cuts without doing the same for non-defense programs.
But defense is just one of 11 bills needed to fund the government in 2017 that remain unfinished, and Congress...
Five Key Points About Budget “Reconciliation”
November 15, 2016
Republican leaders indicate they’ll likely use a special legislative procedure called “reconciliation” to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and probably also to enact tax cuts and perhaps change other spending programs.
