Clinton Signs Spending Bill With Increases for Pell Grants and the NIH

President Clinton signed into law last week a massive spending bill that will increase the budget of the National Institutes of Health by nearly $2-billion and raise the maximum Pell Grant by $125 for fiscal 1999.

The spending bill also sustains existing support for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.

The $500-billion “omnibus” legislation, which Congress sent to the President after approving it overwhelmingly last week, encompasses eight previously unfinished spending bills, including one that finances most federal programs for colleges.

Acknowledging that some of his fellow Republican lawmakers had reservations over spending increases included in the bill, Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, the chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, urged them to vote for the bill anyway.

“By adopting this bill, we can show that we can govern, that we have balanced the budget, and achieved the first budget surplus in 30 years,” he said.

Lobbyists for biomedical research were ecstatic about the massive increase in the budget for the N.I.H. Under the omnibus bill, the agency’s budget will grow by 14.6 per cent, or $1.99-billion, to $15.612-billion.

College lobbyists and representatives of student groups were less enthusiastic about the level of support provided for federal student-aid programs. The big increases in education spending that the Clinton Administration won from Republican lawmakers were mostly gains for elementary- and secondary-education programs, such as the inclusion of $1.2-billion in new funds to hire 100,000 new schoolteachers.

The bill does increase the maximum Pell Grant to $3,125 from $3,000, $25 more than the President proposed in his budget request in February. But that increase is disappointing, college lobbyists and student advocates said, considering that the Clinton Administration and Congress had increased the maximum award by $660 over the last three years, from $2,340 to $3,000.

It’s too soon to slow the momentum in the growth of the maximum Pell award, they said. “While the increase will put more money in the pockets of the neediest college students, it is not enough to reverse the long-term decline in the Pell Grant’s buying power,” said Sanjeev Bery, an associate with the higher-education project at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

But Clinton Administration officials and lawmakers trumpeted the increase nonetheless, saying that it would make an additional 24,000 students eligible for Pell Grants next year. Altogether, 3.9 million students will receive the grants by the beginning of the 1999-2000 academic year.

Lawmakers also reached a compromise on the Federal Work-Study Program, which will receive $870-million in fiscal 1999. That is $40-million more than the program received in 1998, and $20-million more than the House Appropriations Committee had proposed, but $30-million less than the Senate committee and the President had sought.

The TRIO programs for disadvantaged students will receive $600-million, an increase of about $70-million over fiscal 1998, and the same increase that the House committee had proposed. That is $17-million more than the President had requested, and $45-million more than the Senate Appropriations Committee had proposed for the programs.

The omnibus bill includes money for the following items that the House appropriations panel had killed:

* The federal contribution to the Perkins Loan Program, which provides low-interest loans to needy students. The bill provides $100-million for Perkins, $35-million less than it received in fiscal 1998, but $40-million more than the President and the Senate had requested for it.

* The State Student Incentive Grant Program, which provides matching funds, dollar for dollar, to encourage states to commit their own money to need-based student grants. The bill provides $25-million for the program, the same amount that it received in fiscal 1998. That is $11-million less than the Senate committee had requested for it. The Clinton Administration had proposed eliminating it.

* The Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Program, which gives fellowships to graduate students who are studying subjects deemed critical to the nation. The bill gives the program $31-million, about $1-million more than it received last year. That is the same amount that the Senate committee proposed for it. The Clinton Administration had proposed increasing funds for it to $37.5-million.

The omnibus bill also will provide money for several programs proposed by the Clinton Administration that were created when legislation to extend the Higher Education Act was enacted this month.

The omnibus bill includes $120-million for GEAR UP, which will enlist colleges to form partnerships with middle schools that have large concentrations of children from low-income families. The program is designed to give such students the support and motivation they need to go on to college.

The legislation also includes $10-million for the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership Program, a Clinton Administration proposal under which grants will go to colleges and other institutions to improve the technology used to deliver distance education.

In addition, the bill includes $75-million in grants to states and to partnerships of colleges and schools to improve the training of teachers and to recruit more students to teach in underserved urban and rural areas.

To the relief of college lobbyists and student advocates, the omnibus bill does not include a White House proposal that would have helped offset the costs of the legislation by cracking down on borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans. The Administration had urged Congress to allow the government to use a data base at the Department of Health and Human Services to find borrowers who have not repaid their student loans.

Lawmakers rejected the proposal after student advocates and college lobbyists complained that it would help finance the bill on the backs of the poorest people.

Of the mammoth increase for the National Institutes of Health, the largest chunk, as usual, will go to the National Cancer Institute. It will receive $385-million more than it received in fiscal 1998, bringing its total for fiscal 1999 to $2.542-billion.

The bill does not include the $175-million for prostate cancer that Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had inserted into the Senate version of the bill. But the report accompanying the omnibus bill states that lawmakers expect the N.I.H. to take the Senator’s request into account when dividing up the funds. Additionally, the report directs the N.I.H. to submit to Congress, within six months, a report on a five-year plan for prostate-cancer research.

The spending legislation also provides for a 12-per-cent increase in federal funds for AIDS research, to $1.792-billion. But for the fourth fiscal year in a row, Congress has awarded the money for AIDS research directly to the various institutes at the N.I.H. that conduct research on AIDS. The Clinton Administration had asked lawmakers to give the director of the Office of AIDS Research the power to plan the research and to distribute the federal money to the individual institutes at the N.I.H.

The agency’s newest institute -- the National Human Genome Research Institute -- will get $265-million, a 22-per-cent increase over 1998. That hefty raise reflects the agency’s commitment to speed up its research to determine the sequence of the three-billion chemical units that make up human DNA.

The bill includes a variety of riders, or policy-related legislative language, in the section that deals with the N.I.H. It will, for example, prohibit federal support for embryo research and for needle-exchange programs.

The appropriations bill keeps spending on the humanities and arts endowments at their fiscal-1998 levels: $110.7-million for the N.E.H., and $98-million for the N.E.A. Spending on the National Archives and Records Administration will grow to $224.6-million, from $205-million in 1998, and funds for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission will increase to $6-million from $5.5-million.

The omnibus legislation also incorporates a measure that increases the number of temporary visas available to foreign professionals to work in academe and other industries, which some college groups had fought for.

Paulette Walker Campbell contributed to this article.

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