Pell grant status

A Pell Grant entitlement?

EYE ON WASHINGTON

The year was 1972. Charlie Saunders, who would later become ACE's vice president for government relations, was heading home after a long day at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He and his staff had worked for 14 hours to put the final touches on President Richard Nixon's Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (later the Pell Grant) legislation, and deliver a copy to each House and Senate office. But as he was preparing for bed just after midnight, his telephone rang. "Charlie!" squawked a plainly irritated John Erlichman. "This Pell Grant legislation is drafted as an entitlement! We can't have that." "But it's been cleared and sent to the Hill," said Saunders. "I don't care," Erlichman responded. "Get it back NOW!"

Never again in its 30-year existence has the Pell Grant program come so close to attaining entitlement status. Legislators have made only two subsequent attempts to move the program from the discretionary to the mandatory side of the federal budget. In 1988, the entitlement proposal was included in a default prevention bill introduced by former Rep. Pat Williams, and negotiated away by Williams in exchange for the favorable default terms he was seeking.

The second attempt occurred as part of the Higher Education Act (HEA) Amendments of 1992. In this instance, the entitlement was included in both the House and Senate versions of the reauthorization bill. While the higher education community aggressively lobbied for it, this constituency believed it to be too controversial for Republican members. The Democrats, who held the majority in both chambers, as well as the chairs of both the House and Senate authorizing committees (William Ford and Claiborne Pell, respectively), were the architects of the entitlement as a centerpiece of the '92 amendments. In spite of considerable support for the proposal, the entitlement was withdrawn from each version of the bill by its author in order to render the HEA passable. In the House, vocal opposition to the entitlement came not only from Republicans, but also from Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta and Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman David Obey. Removing the entitlement from the bill turned the HEA from legislation that appeared likely to fail in both houses to legislation that passed with virtual unanimity.

Today, the program continues to function as a quasi-entitlement, or an appropriated entitlement. Need-based eligibility criteria are established in the law. All students meeting those criteria are guaranteed a Pell Grant, which can range in size from the minimum amount stipulated by law to the maximum grant level set by Congress annually as part of its appropriations process. The appropriations provided must balance the amount of money available with estimates of how many students will be eligible to receive a grant. This process rarely works smoothly, due in large part to the vagaries of the Department of Education's yearly estimates of how many students will be eligible to receive a grant. Quite commonly, flawed estimates force corrective action in subsequent appropriations bills. Missing the mark by underestimating the number of eligible students results in the program carrying a surplus; overestimates result in a shortfall, such as the one the program is now facing.

For 30 years, the complexities inherent in the program have kept alive the hope among many education analysts that the Pell Grant would one day be designated a true entitlement. Because of the enormous political baggage associated with the concept of "entitlement," this is not a question that is debated during every HEA reauthorization. For a variety of reasons, however, the 2003 HEA reauthorization is shaping up to be one of those times when the entitlement question comes to the forefront of the policy dialogue.

As ACE works with its members and association colleagues on the merits of advocating for Pell Grant entitlement, these are a few of the questions we will need to explore:

Is there any reason why a Pell Grant entitlement might succeed when this year's long, hard fight to secure entitlement status for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) failed?

Is it possible to get a reauthorization bill that includes a Pell Grant entitlement passed in the Republican-controlled House? If not, will the resulting loss of bi- partisanship have consequences for other aspects of the reauthorization?

Will the administration support a Pell Grant entitlement, veto a bill that carries the entitlement, or insist upon front-loading and merit-based math and science grants as the price for its support?

If Pell were moved to the mandatory side of the budget, would it elevate the prominence of other student aid programs, or make them more vulnerable to elimination?

If an entitlement were achieved, would a policy debate ensue over the appropriate size of the federal grant relative to tuition, student budgets, or unmet need?

If we deem entitlement a longshot, is there symbolic value in making the case that Pell deserves to be a mandatory program?

Will advocating for a Pell Grant entitlement consume so much time and energy that it will detract from other, more consequential aspects of the reauthorization?

These are only a few of the questions with which we will begin to grapple as we prepare for the reauthorization battlea battle that might be patently unnecessary but for that fateful midnight phone call from John Erlichman so many years ago.

BECKY TIMMONS is director of government relations at the American Council on Education.