Rep. Lee Slams GOP Budget for Slashing Financial Aid for Higher Education
**For Immediate Release**
Rep. Lee Slams GOP Budget for Slashing Financial Aid for Higher Education
“With these provisions in place throughout this bill, I would not be here.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 29, 2025 — Today in a markup for the House Committee on Education and Workforce, Congresswoman Summer Lee (PA-12) slammed Republicans’ plans to slash financial aid for students seeking higher education, including Pell grants, student loan forgiveness, and income-driven repayment plans. This comes as a part of the reconciliation process for the harmful Republican budget.
“If I had to guess, there probably isn’t a Member of Congress who is more appropriately able to talk about student loan debt than me here, and yet you’re talking–and oftentimes these bills–are talking over people like me.”
“The reality is that so much that’s in this entire reconciliation bill targets me specifically, not me the Congressperson, me, the first-generation Black student who came from a working-class, single, Black mother who could not afford otherwise to send her child to school.”
“With these provisions in place throughout this bill, I would not be here. If we move forward with this piece of legislation, we will not have these opportunities. Black students, brown students, first generation college students, first generation Americans will not have access to college. We cannot simply say that we will take away the opportunities for students to access loans, not replace it with anything else, not replace it with lower college education, not replace it with lower interest rates, not make the system better and still say that you will somehow figure it out.”
“We know the outcome here: Black students, brown students, poor students will not be left to figure it out. Instead, elite students, students who come from the 1%, will continue to be able to access education. They will continue to have access to career fields that we mentioned here, and the gap–the achievement gap, the racial gap–will just continue to increase because these are not being addressed here.”
Footage of Rep. Lee’s full remarks can be found here.
Congresswoman Summer Lee serves on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and the Committee on Education and Workforce. Since taking office in January 2023, she has delivered historic levels of federal investment totaling over $2.4 Billion brought back to Western PA, including over $580 million for infrastructure, over $110 million for affordable transit, over $500 million to keep clean energy manufacturing at home in Pennsylvania, and over $55 million on clean energy efforts in and around schools to help keep our kids and communities safe. These investments will help improve Western Pennsylvania’s infrastructure and transit, ensure cleaner air and drinking water, lower housing costs, fund research institutions, fuel clean manufacturing, fund STEM innovation and entrepreneurship, boost workforce development, and create thousands of good paying union jobs. Lee and her team have also delivered casework and constituent services to over 3,000 constituents with issues ranging from helping our seniors and disabled community access Medicare and social security to helping folks secure housing and helping families with immigration support and passports.