Congress has finalized the national economic-stimulus package after meeting with officials from the Obama administration Wednesday to negotiate differences between the Senate and House of Representatives’ versions of the measure.
The $789 billion agreement ‘mdash; significantly lower than either the House’s initial $819 billion plan or the Senate’s $838 billion revision ‘mdash; will be voted on today before Congress presents the legislation to President Obama for approval next week.
The final plan will allocate $47 billion in state fiscal relief to fund campus infrastructure renovations and prevent cuts in state aid for school districts. In addition, while both the House and Senate versions of the legislation called for the largest-ever increase in Pell Grant funding, Congress’ agreement would inject $17 billion into Pell Grant funding to boost the maximum award per student by $500, to $5,350.
The agreement arrives on the heels of the Senate’s Tuesday approval of its revised version of the bill, which slashed billions of dollars in higher-education funding. The Senate’s plan slightly reduced the maximum Pell Grant award proposed by the House from $5,350 to $5,250, as well as Pell Grant funding from $15.6 billion to $13.9 billion.
Among the largest cuts to higher education in the Senate’s proposed bill was the elimination of a $3.5 billion facility-modernization fund intended to finance construction initiatives for college buildings. The House’s plan, conversely, contained an almost-double $6 billion fund for revamping university infrastructure.
UC spokesman Christopher Harrington said that funding school construction, renovations and repair would help stimulate the economy by creating more jobs. ‘One of the priorities that the University of California has been working on is funding a higher-education infrastructure,’ Harrington said. ‘We are pleased with the House legislation, and we hope that it will be included in the final package.’
The House’s stimulus package, which it approved late last month, allocates $150 billion for public schools and higher education. On the other hand, the Senate’s recovery plan distributes $83 billion in funding for education, and slices $40 billion from state and local-government support for colleges and universities.
‘[UC] appreciates that they recognize the higher role investing in education will have in stimulating
the economy,’ Harrington said.
Similar to the House’s version, the Senate’s bill set aside a $39 billion stabilization fund to account for looming cutbacks and sustain current higher-education and K-12 budget levels. An additional $25 billion was secured for states to fund important public services, such as education.
The revised Senate legislation, however, shrank the stabilization fund to $26.7 billion, and reduced public-service funding to $9.6 billion.
‘We’re happy that the bill passed the Senate because it does provide funds to education programs,’ said California Dept. of Education spokesman Ioannis Kazanis. ‘But we are disappointed in the cut in stabilization funds and that the Senate version doesn’t include funding for school construction.’
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said in a statement that reducing stabilization funds would result in more layoff notifications for educators in as soon as four weeks.
‘This represents a significant loss that will no doubt impact the quality of the education of California’s young people,’ he said.
Scientific research was one of the few areas of higher education that benefited from the Senate’s choices, with the National Institutes of Health receiving $10 billion for mainly biomedical studies and the National Science Foundation receiving $1 billion in research grants.
‘We’re pleased that Congress has provided funding for a number of research efforts,’ Harrington said. ‘It’s our sincere hope that the final package sent to the president will include funding for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Deptartment of Energy’s office of science.’
In addition, the Senate subtracted $1 billion from the House’s $2.1 billion toward the Head Start Program ‘mdash; providing comprehensive education, health and nutrition to low-income families with children ‘mdash; and the Senate excluded funding for educational data systems.
O’Connell cites state educational data systems as a source of high economic activity through the development and purchase of software and the hiring and training of staff to collect, maintain and report education data.
‘We are disappointed there’s nothing in the funds for state educational data systems,’ Kazanis said. ‘Generally speaking, we hope the differences between the two versions will include what was left out of the Senate version and the differences will be made up.’
President Obama issued a statement after notification that a House-Senate conference committee had reached an agreement Wednesday.
‘I want to thank the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who came together around a hard-fought compromise that will save or create more than 3.5 million jobs and get our economy back on track,’ he said.
Additional details of the finalized plan were not available at press time.
Readers can contact Kimberly Cheng at [email protected].