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Pell Grants are, and have been, critically important tools in making higher education a possibility for lower- and middle-income students.

Schools serving disadvantaged students need more time to help these students catch up and gain the core academic skills they will need to succeed in our economy and society.

The difficulty is, Pell Grants are an attempt to do the right thing, and that is to give the low-income student an opportunity to access higher education, and that's a good thing. And welfare was an attempt to help those most in need. The difficulty is, often times a program is so successful that it grows and grows and grows and grows.

We simply can't keep providing money from the federal government in the form of subsidized or actual loans and Pell Grants when we don't have the money.

Pell Grants aren't 'welfare,' they are a gateway to opportunity for some of our nation's best and brightest students.

Unequal funding resources also results in unequal educational opportunity when you consider studies that show that one half of low income students who are qualified to attend college do not attend because they can't afford to.

Poorer students take out larger loans and will have to contribute more to the cost of higher education.

College dropouts with significant debt struggle with repayment over the course of their lives and do not receive the benefits afforded to their peers who have debt but obtain higher-paying jobs as a result of college completion.