I Don’t Hate America!

It’s been a while since we have discussed higher education funding here at IDHA, but the US Congress is taking up the issue this week.

An amendment offered by Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) and Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) to the Higher Education Budget Reconciliation which would have restored $2.4 billion in cuts in subsidies to student lenders (down to a total of $15 billion) failed today in a wide, bipartisan fashion. Insiders thought the vote would be close, but that ended up being very untrue as it did not even get 40 votes in the affirmative.

Both Sens. from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar (D) and Norm Coleman (R) voted against the amendment.

Critics of the cuts said that they would force smaller lenders out of the market and lobbied against the cuts, but student advocates have thought it is time for more money to go directly to students, not lenders.

We will have more on this throughout this process.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Norm Coleman, Amy Klobuchar, Higher Education, Congress, DJ D.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.