WASHINGTON, D.C.—Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) announced today that they have sent a letter to President Bush urging him to include funding in the FY 2007 budget to increase the maximum Pell grant award to $4,500 up from its current level of $4,050. In the letter, Senators Collins and Feingold explained that today the current Pell grant maximum award covers less than 40-percent of the average costs of a public four-year institution forcing an increasing number of students to rely on loans to finance their education. “In Maine, an increase of $450 in the Pell grant maximum award would provide an additional $6.3 million in Pell Grant aid for students in our state,” said Senator Collins. “As tuition rises, the road to higher education in America gets steeper and harder to climb for lower and middle-income families. Increasing Pell grants is one way to keep the doors to higher education open to all students.” “As the cost of higher education continues to rise, we need to do more to help low and middle-income students,” Senator Feingold said. “The Pell grant program has benefited millions of Americans and we must ensure that this widely successful program continues to help make higher education a reality for those who lack the means to pay for it.” Senators Collins and Feingold are among a bipartisan group of Senators who have consistently supported increasing the maximum Pell grant award. Following is text of the letter to President Bush. President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: As you finalize your administration’s fiscal year 2007 budget request, we urge you to include funding to provide an increase in the maximum Pell grant award. Such an increase would ensure that the door to higher education, and the future that it offers, will remain open for hundreds of thousands of needy college students next year. As you know, we strongly support increasing the Pell grant maximum award, and believe that a substantial increase is long overdue. For this reason, we have cosponsored legislation urging the Senate to increase the maximum Pell grant award from $4,050 to $4,500 -- an increase of $450 in a single year. Over the past twenty years, the value of Pell grant aid has been seriously eroded by increasing costs of higher education and by inflation. The current Pell grant maximum award covers only 38 percent of the average costs of a public four-year institution -- roughly half of what it covered at the program’s inception. This decline in grant aid has forced students to rely increasingly on loans to finance their education. For many students, this staggering amount of debt has become a substantial deterrent to the pursuit of a post-secondary education. One study found that low-income families are significantly less willing, by almost 50 percent, to finance a college education through borrowed money than their wealthier counterparts. For these students, an increase in Pell grant aid may very well be the deciding factor on whether they pursue a college degree. We appreciate your strong support of efforts to retire the Pell shortfall last year. We are hopeful that we can now focus our efforts on raising the maximum grant award, which unfortunately has not been raised in over four years. Pell grants make the difference in whether students have access to higher education and a chance to participate fully in the American dream. We appreciate the difficult task you face in crafting this year’s budget and we thank you for the consideration of our request.