The following editorial appeared in the New York Daily News on Monday, Jan. 3:

President Bush promised in last fall’s campaign to expand the key federal program for helping low-income and working-class Americans pay for a college education. Here’s how he has fulfilled the vow: He’s cutting grants for 1.3 million students and dropping 90,000 from assistance entirely.

By adjusting the formula for calculating eligibility for Pell grants, the administration figures to save $300 million a year, helping in a tiny way to trim the federal deficit. Leaving aside the fact that $300 million is chump change compared with a $400 billion deficit, slashing Pell grants is a reminder of the White House’s bias toward tending to the needs of the well-off and well-connected at the expense of others.

Further, it is galling to note that the Republican-controlled Congress empowered Bush to cut the grants in a spending bill that delivered more pork than Hickory Farms Hams at Christmas. Lobbyists and their high-paying clients got what they wanted in that 28-pound, 3,326-page oinker, and families trying to put kids through college on incomes of less than $35,000 got the shaft.

Pell grants have been vital to needy students since 1972. Today, the $13 billion program assists 5.3 million students. That’s about one-third of Americans in college, and the ranks are growing because, happily, an increasing number of low-income students have set their sights on higher education. The average annual grant is $2,400, while the average tuition at a public four-year college is $5,132, not counting room and board.

To cut costs, the Bush administration began calculating eligibility using how much money a recipient’s family paid in taxes in 2002 rather than in 1990. Tax rates were higher in 1990 than in 2002, so on paper, at least, families now have more disposable income to pay for college. The result: Grants will be cut to those 1.3 million students by an average of $200 a year and those additional 90,000 students will lose out entirely.

Compounding the unfairness, many states raised their taxes after 2002, so in point of fact many of those same families are not as well-off as the government says they are. Then, finally, other loan and grant programs use the Pell formulas to determine their own eligibility, meaning that students will likely find access to state aid and federally subsidized student loans reduced as well.

Yes, the deficit must be cut, and we wish Bush well in meeting his promise to halve the red ink in four years. But starting the effort by taking money out of the pockets of low-income families struggling to help their kids climb the economic ladder is grossly unfair when those at the very top, those who enjoy the biggest benefits of Bush’s deficit-busting tax cuts, are not being asked to sacrifice one penny.

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