The Stimulus Bill and You 

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the stimulus bill, and four days later, President Barack Obama, the main proponent of the measure, signed it into law. Though the measure focused on strengthening the economy, part of the plan aimed to make college more affordable for more people.

 

At the signing ceremony for the $787 billion program in Denver, Obama struck a somber tone and said the struggle to save the American economy would be difficult.

 

"None of this will be easy," he said. "The road to recovery will not be straight. We will make progress, and there may be some slippage along the way."

 

"We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive in our time."

 

The stimulus package was an ambitious combination of federal spending and tax cuts meant to create and save jobs -- in California, that would account for more than 110,000 jobs alone -- spur economic activity and encourage new levels of accountability and transparency in government.

 

The stimulus package has more than its fair share of critics. The New York Times noted last year that the bill was criticized by conservatives as bloated with pork-barrel spending, but also criticized by the left as too tepid and not bold enough to jumpstart the economy.

 

A substantial part of the stimulus package focused on education, with a special focus on aiding college students.

Education was the third largest recipient of stimulus funding at $90.9 billion, according to a round-up by the Web site Academic Perspective.

 

Education funds were slated to aid local school districts and prevent layoffs and cutbacks ($44.5 billion), assist low-income public schoolchildren ($13 billion), support Head Start ($2.1 billion) and aid special education programs ($12.2 billion).

 

College students would receive up to $30 billion in new funds in 2009 and 2010, about $17 billion in the form of increased Pell Grants and $13 billion in expanded higher education tax credits that would, for the first time, be available to some students from lower-income families that do not pay taxes, according a February 2009 article in Inside Higher Ed.

 

Johns Hopkins University Freshman Ben Cifuentes, a Pell Grant recipient, is one student who could benefit from the stimulus package.

 

"People who don't have that much income or too many resources will benefit from it," he told the Johns Hopkins News-Letter last year.

 

But Pell Grants are only part of most student’s financial aid packages, said Vincent Amoroso, Johns Hopkins’ director of Student Financial Services.

 

"The Pell Grant is usually just a portion of a student's financial aid package, which is supplemented with other federal, state and institutional aid," he wrote in an e-mail to the News-Letter.

 

Calculating how much more each Pell Grant recipient will receive, however, is no simple equation, a U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman told College Life Direct.

 

“More students are getting Pell [grants] and they’re getting more money from Pell [grants],” said education spokeswoman Jane Glickman. “That’s what the stimulus bill did.”

 

Because Pell Grants are based on income levels, determining how much more each student will net “is a complex thing,” Glickman said.

 

The stimulus package has drawn sharp criticism.

 “The majority of it [the stimulus package], of course, was about back-filling budgets … and the big number was in student aid,” said Lisa Snell, director of education for The Reason Foundation, a non-partisan, free-market-supporting think tank based in California.

Snell said bloated budgets are part of the problem – and not the solution – when it comes to funding higher education.

“One of the reasons we have seen college costs rise so much is because we’ve had a huge amount of money coming into the system,” Snell told College Life Direct. “One of the reasons it costs so much is that there’s a lot of money that’s free – because the taxpayers pay for it.”

Several agencies did not return calls seeking comment on progress being made with the stimulus bill.

A spokesman from the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board forwarded inquiries to a spokesman for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the federal budget. Neither spokesmen were available for comment.