Federal cuts would slam state students, job seekers

WASHINGTON — The campus of Everett Community College is probably as good a place as any to glimpse the dueling visions of fiscal responsibility being offered by Democrats and Republicans.

Everett's in-state tuition is as little as $950 a quarter. Yet 2,300 low-income students, or 14 percent of the student body, rely on federal Pell grants to help pay for their schooling.

On Saturday, the U.S. House approved the single largest slash to federal discretionary spending in history. It lopped $61 billion from a budget that was already frozen at 2010 levels. The House Republicans cut everything from heating assistance for low-income people to food-safety inspections to housing and transportation projects.

Among the cuts in the stopgap spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2011 is a $5.7 billion drop in Pell grants. That would mean $82 million less for students in Washington state, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning research institute in Washington, D.C.

Many students, including those at Everett Community College, would lose as much as $845 a year in aid while a few would forfeit their Pell grants entirely.

President Obama's 2012 budget request, on the other hand, seeks to boost Pell grant funding by $11.1 billion to keep the maximum awards at $5,500 a year, or $7,400 for schools that operate on a quarterly, instead of a semester, calendar.

Congress has yet to act on Obama's budget proposal for fiscal 2011, which ends in seven months.

Laurie Franklin, Everett Community College's dean of enrollment, said potential Pell grant cuts could well push some students to drop out. About a third of the students at the two-year vocational and academic college hold down jobs and a third have children.

"It's very difficult for many students to afford to go to school," Franklin said. The Pell grant program "is the only resource that many of them have."

In all, House Republicans approved cuts equal to $100 billion below what Obama sought to spend in his 2011 budget. That could translate to hundreds of millions of dollars less for Washington, which has received about $10 billion in federal money in each of the past two years.

Republicans say the cuts are necessary to shrink the deficit, which is expected to soar to $1.7 trillion this year. For fiscal 2011 personal and business tax receipts are expected to cover just under half of the federal budget; the government borrows the rest.

The deepest Republican cuts are in agriculture and rural-development programs, and housing and transportation projects. But the biggest cuts in absolute dollars are in social services and education.

For example, Washington would lose $27 million for special education for students with disabilities, literacy programs for at-risk children and training for math and science teachers, among other items. Money for repairing public housing in the state would be cut by $15 million. Cuts in community-development programs such as senior and youth centers would total about $42 million.

Some $20 million would be cut from training and tuition help for laid-off workers and summer-jobs programs for teens. Marlena Sessions, chief executive of Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County, said such programs give job hunters a real edge.

A study by the state Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board showed employment among laid-off workers after training was 17 percentage points higher than nonparticipants of similar backgrounds and their paychecks were $10,000 higher on average.

If the Republican cuts go through, Sessions said they could force closure of some of the WorkSource centers in King County or even severely curtail the program.

The House spending bill passed 235-189, with just three Republicans siding with 186 Democrats in voting no. Washington's nine-member delegation voted along party lines.

But the House rejected an amendment that would have cut $22 billion more. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, was the only one of the state's four Republican House members to vote for it.

Democrats in the Senate, who are in the majority, have said they will not accept spending cuts anywhere near what the Republicans are seeking.

Obama has called his budget request a "down payment" on future, more significant, efforts to pare the federal debt. Some groups, including the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, have criticized Obama for not tackling the debt more aggressively.

So far, all the proposed cuts have been within the $1.1 trillion discretionary spending portion that accounts for a third of the federal budget. The rest is considered mandatory spending, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and interest on the national debt.

With few exceptions, neither Democratic or Republican leaders nor Obama have put out specific policies to curb entitlement spending.

What's more, 60 percent of the discretionary spending goes to defense, homeland security and some veterans programs. House Republicans would cut that spending by less than 1 percent this year.

Nonsecurity spending, including education, science, environment, transportation and housing, would drop by about 14 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Brian Riedl, lead budget analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation, defended keeping security spending largely intact. "Defense is the first duty of the federal government," Riedl said.

By contrast, schools, health services and other nonsecurity programs can count on local and state taxes as well as federal dollars, Riedl said. "It's time for local and state governments to stand on their own two feet."

Kyung Song: 202-662-7455 or ksong@seattletimes.com