Senate Panel Backs Increases for Pell Grants, NIH

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee approved a 2018 spending bill Thursday that would significantly increase discretionary funds for the Pell Grant program for needy students and biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health and rejects proposed cuts in research overhead reimbursements, continuing to put Republican congressional leaders at odds with the Trump administration on programs important to higher education. The Senate bill would extract $2.6 billion from the Pell Grant program's surplus, less than the $3.3 billion that parallel legislation in the House of Representatives would slash.