Expand targeted aid and grants for students who can’t afford the price of college.
Expand targeted aid and grants for students who cannot afford college.
Occurrences
“I'll always fight for federal investments in our schools and community colleges, because every degree earned here changes a family's story for good.”
Evidence
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Trahan's Education page says she supports making higher education, including community colleges, technical education, and apprenticeships, affordable and accessible to all, and says she helped craft the College Affordability Act, including her Net Price Calculator Act and other higher-education provisions.
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Congress.gov shows the College Affordability Act was reported to the House and would revise federal student financial aid programs, including increasing the maximum federal Pell Grant award, expanding the availability of financial aid to postsecondary students, and increasing college access and success for low-income students and students with disabilities.
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Congress.gov states that section 2003 of the American Rescue Plan provided additional funding for institutions of higher education and required institutions to allocate at least half of those funds to emergency financial-aid grants to students.
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Trahan said the American Rescue Plan funding for higher education was designed to help keep students safe and on track, and the release notes that at least half of the money for colleges and universities had to be distributed as emergency cash assistance grants to students facing hunger, homelessness, and other hardships.
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The IRS FAQ says section 2003 of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, enacted on March 11, 2021, allocated additional higher-education funds through the HEA, and that those funds could provide financial aid grants to students for cost-of-attendance components or emergency costs such as food, housing, health care, mental health care, or child care.
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The House Clerk's roll-call record for H.R. 1319, the American Rescue Plan Act, lists the vote question as passage, the status as passed, and Representative Trahan of Massachusetts voting Yea.
Assessments
The promise was to expand targeted aid and grants for students who could not afford college. During Trahan's House term, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 became law and included Section 2003, which provided additional higher-education funding and required a substantial share to be distributed as emergency financial-aid grants to students facing college-related costs and hardships. Trahan voted for the bill, giving her direct federal legislative credit for an enacted expansion of targeted student grant aid. Her work on the College Affordability Act also shows effort on broader college-aid expansion, though that bill did not become law.
Trahan supported and voted for the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 during her House term, and that law provided additional higher-education funding with a requirement that at least half of institutional allocations go to emergency financial-aid grants for students. That directly expanded targeted grant aid for students facing financial hardship and fits the promise, even though broader affordability legislation such as the College Affordability Act did not become law.
Trahan supported and voted for enacted American Rescue Plan higher-education funding that required institutions to distribute at least half of certain funds as emergency financial-aid grants to students, which did expand targeted student aid for financially vulnerable college students during her term. However, the broader affordability agenda reflected in the College Affordability Act, including larger Pell Grants and wider financial-aid eligibility, did not become law, so the promise was only partly fulfilled rather than fully delivered.