Tom Harkin: “I rise--and I am sure this is no surprise to anyone--in opposition to the amendment offered by my friend from Arizona.…”

“I rise--and I am sure this is no surprise to anyone--in opposition to the amendment offered by my friend from Arizona. Again, I would concur with what my distinguished chairman said. About half I agree with; half I do not agree with in terms of the Senator's comments. We are all in favor of increasing Pell grants and making sure everyone is covered, but I would say this committee, under the able leadership of Senator Specter, has done a great job of increasing the Pell grants to historically high levels--a maximum grant of $3,000, up from $2,700 last year. Certainly you always perhaps could have more. But I haven't heard from any institution of higher learning or anyone that is involved in the Pell grant program saying that this is insufficient. I think what I have heard is that they are very, very happy with what this committee has done in meeting these requirements and getting the level up. In taking the cut out of LIHEAP for this, though, talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul, because we are talking about the same kind of universe. We are talking about low-income families. Again, just to reiterate and reaffirm what the chairman said, the LIHEAP Program has gone down 50 percent in the last decade. We started out at about $2.1 billion in 1985 and it is down now to $1 billion--a 50-percent drop in the amount of money, yet the eligible population for LIHEAP has grown by about 30 percent--33 percent in that same period of time.”