In stark contrast to how the House is handling spending bills this year, the Senate Committee on Appropriations approved the FY 2024 Labor-HHS-Education subcommittee bill with a $250 increase in the Pell Grant, bringing the maximum award to $7,645 for the 2024-25 award year, and level funding for TRIO and GEAR UP.

The bill also increases funding for Teacher Quality Partnership Grants and Hawkins Centers of Excellence for Teaching, which are both slated for elimination in the House bill.  Additionally, the bill provides targeted increases for specific institutes at the National Institutes of Health, in contrast to the House cuts. (As Washington Update went to press on Thursday, it was still unknown what the funding status was for key federal student aid programs, including Federal Work-Study, the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, TRIO, and GEAR UP.)

Even with the additional funds, the bill provides $79.6 billion for the Department of Education, which is slightly less than last year, but is $18 billion more than the House version. The president’s budget requested $90 billion for the Department. The House consideration of spending bills has stalled due to continued infighting among Republicans to further lower funding levels below those set in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.

Subcommittee Chair Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) noted that while the bill provides less funding than last year, of the more than 10,000 Senate program requests, only a handful asked to cut a program. She said the bill represents a bipartisan compromise and wished she could have done more. Ranking Member Shelley Moore-Capito (R-WV) also praised the bill and highlighted that “regular order is doable.” 

The Senate Appropriations Committee has completed work on all 12 spending bills before the August recess, with bipartisan support, for the first time since 2018. Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) in her closing remarks said “this is a big deal!” She and Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) both agreed that the committee work represents serious bipartisan efforts to face the challenge of the spending levels from the debt limit deal. Before the markup, Murray and Collins agreed to include additional funding from rescissions, changes in mandatory programs and emergency funding to provide higher allocations across all subcommittees. 

The next steps in the process under regular order would be for the House to finish writing its bills, both chambers hold votes on their versions, and then hold a conference committee to reconcile the differences. But as Congress leaves Washington for the August recess, the House and Senate have vastly different approaches to the FY 2024 appropriations hanging in the balance.

With drastic cuts to student aid in the House bill and slight increases in the Senate, the stage is set for difficult budget battles in September, and possibly a government shutdown before the two chambers can agree on how to proceed.