Cut Job Training, Pell Grants? GOP Says Yes We Can

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October 24, 2011

In early September, as memories of the debt ceiling fight faded with the summer, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor acknowledged that the economic policy debate was about to change: “The focus now is jobs,” he told reporters. “The past eight months we’ve been all about cuts.” But it’s become clear that for Cantor and the rest of the Republican leadership, the focus is still on cuts. Among those cuts are cuts to job training programs – including programs that at least some experts believe might help the unemployed get a foothold back in the workforce.

Consider what House Republicans are proposing to spend on edcuation for fiscal year 2012: The latest blueprint, released earlier this month, would reduce funding Department of Labor by 20 percent, although they would fund some individual programs at or above current levels. And even the funding Republicans do provide may be weaker than it seems. According to several budget experts I interviewed, esoteric changes in the budgeting process for those programs—in effect, capping funding in advance—could lead to even bigger cuts than advertised.

Many of the programs that Republicans would potentially open up to cuts, such as the Employment Training Administration, have been proven to connect dislocated workers and disadvantaged youth to the labor force and build skills for better jobs. As Neil Ridley, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), explained, these are vital programs that “provide value and have a return, especially for low-income adults.” Indeed, a number of studies over the past decade indicate that participants in such programs enjoyed higher rates of employment and wages than non-participants did . . .

Since Republicans don’t want to reduce how much money individual students get from the program each year, they’re proposing to reduce how many students can get the grants in the first place. They would do this, primarily, by counting Social Security benefits and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as “income.” That would force families to contribute more money towards tuition, effectively pushing many students out of the program. Among the other proposed changes are retroactively reducing the lifetime limit on Pell grants from nine to six years, eliminating eligibility for part-time students, and halving the “auto-zero” expected family contribution. Vicky Choitz, a senior policy analyst at CLASP, told me that, if enacted, these changes would cause roughly 550,000 students to lose access to Pell grants next year, and one million would by 2017.

. . . Choitz estimates that a working dependent student would receive a cut approximately three times as large as that of a non-working student.


read more: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/96613/republican-job-training-pell-grant-cuts-workforce-skill-cantor

related:

GOP pitches transportation bill as jobs program
http://www.newsday.com/news/gop-pitches-transportation-bill-as-jobs-program-1.3268894