The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cut would increase by $5,800 the cost of federal loan repayment for a college student borrowing the national average of $17,000 from government programs. Scott Fleming, assistant to the university president for federal relations, said that a typical Georgetown student borrows about that average loan size.

But Alexa Marrero, deputy communications director for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that the budget cut will actually benefit students in the long run.

“The amount of financial aid provided to students will actually increase under this bill,” Marrero said. “The purpose of this bill is to reform the programs so they operate more efficiently while providing additional benefits to students.”

She said that the bill increases the limits on loans that students may borrow and lowers fees on those loans.

The approval of the budget cut bill followed the rejection of a $142.5 billion appropriation bill by the House on Thursday. Democrats and a handful of Republicans voted against the appropriation, which would have frozen all student aid programs at their 2005 levels.

Although the House bill has been approved, it may still face alteration when it is reconciled with the Senate’s version of the bill, which cuts $8.8 billion from student aid programs out of a total cut of $35 billion.

Fleming said the Senate’s version of student loan program cuts takes a more modest approach to educational programs. He said that although the Senate version includes cuts on student loans, some of the money cut from the programs would be used for other forms of educational aid.

“[The Senate version] rolls the money back into more financial aid to students eligible for Pell Grants,” Fleming said. “They establish new financial aid programs for students studying mathematics, science and critical foreign language,” such as Arabic and Turkish.

The conference report will also iron out differences in proposals to alter interest rates on federal Stafford Loans. The House bill maintains a variable interest rate, and caps the rate at 8.25 percent, while the Senate bill fixes the rate at 6 percent.

Marrero said that the House bill will stabilize the current, inconsistent interest rate structure. She added that if the budget fails in the final vote, students will have a fixed interest rate of 6.8 percent, higher than the current rate.

“The House bill will ensure students aren’t locked out of low, market-based interest rates by preventing the imposition of a fixed interest rate,” she said.

Some Georgetown students have been actively opposing the House version of the budget reconciliation bill for the last few weeks. On Thursday night, about 40 students, led by the College Democrats, made a last-ditch effort to express their opposition against the spending cut by sitting in the House gallery during the vote.

“[It was an] issue that we’ve been worried about for . around a month . ever since the beginning of October,” College Democrats President Peter Solecki (COL ’07) said. “This budget has been languishing for a couple of weeks now.”

The group stayed in the Gallery to watch the session. At one point, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) mentioned the Georgetown students in his speech on the floor of the House.

Solecki called the vote “a midnight raid on student aid.”

“Our feeling about going up there was, `we will go up there and show that students are watching.’ It was very frustrating,” he said.

Some students expressed their disapproval that the House budget reconciliation bill passed.

“These cuts will personally affect me by increasing the amount of money my mother has to pay for me to attend college,” said Reginald Douglas (COL ’09), who spoke at the “Stop the Raid on Student Aid” rally at the Capitol Building last month.

“Most students have some level of federal student aid and these cuts directly put that aid in jeopardy.”