{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-banks-introduces-bill-to-reserve-pell-grants-for-american-students/", "Sen. Banks Introduces Bill to Reserve Pell Grants for American Students", "2026-09-23", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Jim Banks", "B001299", "www.banks.senate.gov", "banks", "https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Click here for the full story from Breitbart or read below:\n\nEXCLUSIVE: Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) has introduced a new piece of legislation that would amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to require that recipients of Pell Grants be U.S. citizens, a move the Republican said would \u201cput American students first.\u201d\n\nUnveiled on Wednesday morning, the \u201cPell for Americans Act\u201d simply states that the federally funded aid grant should only go to American undergraduates \u2014 not foreigners.\n\nDespite efforts to restrict eligibility for non-citizens in the Republicans\u2019 One Big Beautiful Bill, several classes, including refugees, asylees, immigration parolees, Cuban-Haitian entrants, and \u201cconditional permanent residents,\u201d remain eligible.\n\nJust this February, the Hill reported that the Pell program \u201cis in financial difficulties with a projected shortfall of billions of dollars that could lead to trouble for students as soon as 2028.\u201d\n\nBy the end of this fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects the Pell Grant program will be $5 billion in debt. Over the next ten years, that number jumps to between $104 billion and $132 billion if nothing is done about the issue.\n\nThe projections come even after lawmakers gave the program a one-time boost of $10.5 billion in President Donald Trump\u2019s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.\n\nBanks\u2019 office told Breitbart News that his bill is actually modeled after a piece of legislation originally introduced by House Democrats in 1994 that had the same stated goal of amending the Higher Education Act of 1965 to direct Pell funds to Americans only.\n\n\u201cIn 2026, Socialist-aligned Democrats fight harder for illegal aliens than their own constituents, but back in 1994, they led a bill that would ensure taxpayer-funded Pell Grants are reserved for American students only,\u201d the senator said in an exclusive statement.\n\n\u201cAmerican taxpayers have no business subsidizing the college tuitions of foreign nationals, and three decades later, I\u2019m proud to reintroduce this commonsense bill to put American students first,\u201d the Indiana Republican added.\n\n###", 1, "2026-09-24T09:44:48Z", "2026-09-24T09:45:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-banks-introduces-bill-to-reserve-pell-grants-for-american-students/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.0992709323763847, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}