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The top Republican on the House education committee expressed skepticism Thursday about calls to restore access to Pell Grants for incarcerated students.
In a subcommittee hearing focused on college completion, Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, said her home state is already meeting the need for postsecondary education in prisons with state funds.
“I do not understand why we want to burden people all over this country to pay for programs for prisons by giving them Pell Grants when the states themselves can take care of this,” she said. “I'm not really sure where this push for Pell is coming from.”
Congress passed a federal ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students in 1994. The Obama administration, though, launched an experiment in 2015 to restore the grants for a limited number of students behind bars.
Under the Trump administration, higher ed and criminal justice reform advocates have sought to build support for a complete repeal of the Pell ban. House Democrats last year included Pell Grants for incarcerated students in a proposal to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. And Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, last month reintroduced legislation to repeal the ban, which was co-sponsored by Utah Republican Mike Lee.
Senator Lamar Alexander, the GOP chairman of the Senate education committee, has also suggested in statements that he may be open to removing the ban in a new HEA law. Foxx, by contrast, offered the clearest statements by any Republican so far against restoring access to the grants.
