President Obama on Thursday proposed a huge expansion of the government's role in making college more affordable and putting it within reach of more students... The president was following through on a campaign promise to give every child the chance to go to college or pursue some form of higher education.
In his budget plan, Obama seeks to link growth of the Pell Grant program to inflation for the first time since the program began. It would grow by more than 75 percent over the next decade.
Obama seeks to save money and protect students from the current turmoil in financial markets by boosting direct lending by the government and discontinuing government-subsidized loans made by private lenders.
During the Bush administration, a massive student loan scandal exposed student lending companies that were improperly collecting hundreds of millions in federal subsidies. At the time, Education Secretaries Rod Paige and his successor, Margaret Spellings, argued repeatedly that under existing law they were powerless to stop the payments and that it was Congress that needed to act.
Obama apparently disagrees.
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