Kids First

The House’s plan to spend $6 billion on higher education modernization. The Senate had rejected that idea earlier in the week. Senators also had turned down a House plan to spend $14 billion for K-12 construction.


Education lobbyist have said that the final number for modernization could go as high as $9 billion, with $6 billion for K-12 and $3 billion for higher education.



In addition, the final package includes new funding for pipeline programs such as Head Start, Title I and special education.

Job traning

In this economic climate more displaced workers are looking to be retrained and find a new career path.

President Obama allocated $4 Billion for adult job training and dislocated worker job training, intended to help laid-off workers find new employment in similar or new industries.

Funding includes money to help colleges offer career training programs including community college courses.

Commuters included

The recent increase in Pell grants will help many students with their college expense's.

And now purchasing a computer for college now qualifies as an expense for tax-exempt 529 college saving plan.

Obama does it alone

Preisdent Obama proposes to index the grant to inflation plus 1 percent, turning college aid into yet another entitlement program that the federal government has to fund and increase every year, similar to Medicaid and Medicare.

It is rarely good policy to remove spending decisions from the legislative body. It may be that increasing Pell grants every year is a sound policy; if so, Congress should feel compelled to do so with an annual vote.

Work Study Increase

College students look forward to work study jobs and President Obama made room for improvement.

The federal work-study program gets an additional $200 million, enough to pay for approximately 130,000 new work-study jobs averaging 1,500 per job per year.