The Democratic majority on the House education committee early Wednesday approved, along party lines, a coronavirus relief package that would include another $40 billion in aid to colleges and universities. The package sets the education and labor pieces of the $1.9 trillion proposal House Democrats are assembling to send to the Senate.
In a marathon meeting that began at 3 p.m. Tuesday and stretched until after 4 a.m. Wednesday, Democrats also beat back a slew of Republican amendments that would have denied emergency grants in the package to undocumented students, denied relief funds to institutions with partnerships with China and steered funding from those with large endowments to community colleges.
Democrats also voted down amendments offered by the committee’s top Republican, Virginia Foxx, to undo a provision in the bill that would strengthen the so-called 90-10 rule regulating for-profit institutions.
Republicans, including Foxx, criticized the Democrats’ proposal as doing “more for the left-wing playbook than it does for struggling Americans.” Foxx said Democrats had not tried to reach a bipartisan compromise.