House Stalls Spending Bill That Would Boost Pell Grants, Biomedical Research
A proposed spending bill that would raise Pell Grant award amounts and increase funding for the National Institutes of Health was delayed indefinitely Thursday after Democrats and Republicans began squabbling over the bill’s provisions, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Spending Bill for Student Aid And NIH Hits Partisan Roadblock in House,” June 26, 2008).
Republicans want to strip out the financial aid and biomedical research funding provisions of the proposed legislation — which the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee had been poised to approve for the 2009 fiscal year — and replace them with unrelated provisions, including one authorizing an expansion of oil drilling in the United States, the Chronicle reports.
The move incensed the Committee’s chairman Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc., who called it “a political stunt,” the kind that explains why Americans “despise” Congress. Democrats then moved to adjourn the session.
The breakdown came a week after the Appropriations subcommittee had approved the current form of the spending bill, which would raise the maximum Pell Grant award to $4,900 and increase the NIH budget by $1.2-billion.
If the full House Appropriations Committee resumes consideration of the bill and approves it, the bill would go before the full House of Representatives for a vote.
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