House Bill Preserves Pell, Slashes Other Student Aid Programs

The House Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee measure would cut the Department of Education's budget by 15 percent, eliminate the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG), and scale back Federal Work-Study (FWS) and other campus-based programs. The proposal also reduces funding for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

Notably, the bill diverges from the Trump administration on several fronts. It preserves the maximum Pell Grant at $7,395, maintains funding for TRIO and GEAR UP, and significantly softens the administration's proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reducing funding by $456 million instead of nearly $20 billion. For FWS, Trump had sought a $980 million reduction; the House bill lowers that cut to about $451 million.

"At a high level, the House seems to be attempting to align with Trump a little bit more closely than the Senate side," ACE's Emmanual Guillory, told Inside Higher Ed. "But if anything was surprising, it was the pleasant surprise that [cuts to] some areas like Work-Study weren't as significant as the ones Trump proposed."

The legislation also includes a provision renaming the new workforce Pell Grant as the "Trump Grant" and prohibits enforcement of certain Biden-era regulations.

The Senate's version, approved by the full Appropriations Committee before the August recess, protects SEOG, FWS, TRIO, and GEAR UP, sustains support for OCR, and increases NIH's budget by $400 million. That bill also maintains overall Department of Education funding at $79 billion, far higher than the House plan.

These negotiations are unfolding against the backdrop of broader fiscal uncertainty. None of the 12 annual spending bills have been finalized, leaving student aid, research funding, and campus operations at risk of disruption. Even discussions over a short-term extension, or continuing resolution (CR), have exposed divisions, with proposals ranging from November through March.

If lawmakers do not act by Oct. 1, it would mark the fifth government shutdown in the past 10 years. The uncertainty is heightened by the president's recent moves to rescind funding Congress had already approved, including a $4.9 billion pullback announced last week.