Short-Term Pell Amendment Blocked in Congress
Katherine Knott
June 13, 2024
The House Rules Committee has shot down an attempt to add legislation expanding the Pell Grant to workforce training programs that run between eight to 14 weeks to a must-pass national security and military bill.
Sponsors of the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act sought to attach the bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025. It was one of more than 1,300 proposed amendments to the legislation. In the end, the Rules Committee, which met Tuesday, decided that just 350 of those amendments were considered “in order,” or relevant to the underlying legislation. Pell expansion didn’t make the cut.
The Rules committee defeat doesn’t spell an end for “short-term Pell,” which would require institutions that are subject to an endowment tax—a few dozen wealthy private colleges—to reimburse the Education Department for unpaid student loans in order to pay for the expansion. But inclusion in the NDAA was seen as one of the best chances for the bill to pass before the end of the year.
