Congress Takes Next Step Toward Simplifying Student-Aid Form

Washington — When President Obama unveiled his plans to streamline the Free Application for Federal Student Aid last month, he called on Congress to strike from the form several questions about family income and assets.

Today the U.S. House of Representatives took the first step toward that goal, in a sweeping student-aid bill introduced by Rep. George Miller of California, chairman of the education committee. Among many other changes, the legislation would remove questions about aid applicants’ assets from the form, known as the Fafsa.

The change would allow Fafsa filers to answer all of the form’s income-related questions with information from their tax returns. Under a pilot program included in the president’s plan, students applying for aid for the 2010 spring semester would be able to retrieve tax information from the Internal Revenue Service that would automatically fill in, or “prepopulate,” the answers to the Fafsa’s income questions.

To ensure that removing the questions would not result in the redistribution of aid to high-income families, the bill introduced today would bar students with individual or family assets over $150,000 from receiving need-based grants.

The House education panel will discuss the bill next Tuesday. A version of the measure has not yet been introduced in the U.S. Senate. —Kelly Field