Government aid for college students may soon receive its largest in over a decade.

President Bush is expected to approve by month’s end the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, a multi-billion dollar budget re-appropriation that passed by a vast majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives on Sept. 7.

If the bill is passed, the government will increase the maximum Pell Grant, a vast federal aid program targeted at undergraduate students, from $4,310 to $5,400 annually by 2012. The Pell Grant, awarded to more than 5 million students each year, is the government’s primary financial aid grant for college students.

Funding for the grants will increase by about $12 billion, according to Lamont Ivey, a staff assistant for the House’s Committee on Education and Labor.

Ivey said that while Georgetown may be less affected by the bill than schools with higher proportions of needy students, many at Georgetown will still receive increased government aid if the bill is passed.

In addition to increasing Pell Grant awards, the bill would lower interest rates on student loans from 6.8 to 3.4 percent over the next four years and allow students to pay back their loans in reduced increments determined by their income. The government would also subsidize a loan-forgiveness program for students who choose civil service careers, if the bill is enacted.

In order to fund the bill, the government wouldcut subsidies to student lenders by $21 billion. The availability of student loans, however, would not decrease, Ivey said.

Walter Trosin (SFS ’10), whose tuition is financed by student loans, expressed satisfaction with the bill. Trosin said that he and his parents are worried about the prospect of repaying student loans under current interest rates.

“That would help me, personally, a lot,” he said about the bill.

Others, however, said that the bill doesn’t go far enough.

“Our nation’s facing a lot of challenges on that accessibility,” said Luke Swarthout, a higher-education advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “There’s a lot that still needs to be done.”

The bill was passed by a 79-12 vote in the Senate and a 292-97 vote in the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, some Republican legislators are urging President Bush not to sign the proposal.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), a member of the Senate Budget Committee, said the bill’s proposal to re-appropriate $21 billion currently dedicated to student-lender subsidies is “a mockery of the budget process,” according to a Sept. 21 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

But Swarthout said that the bill offers hope to a new generation of college students.

“It’s very encouraging that one of the most bipartisan and significant domestic policies to come out of this Congress is a policy to make college more affordable,” he said. “That says a lot of about the importance of the issue to students and families across the country.”