President Donald Trump issued a freeze on federal spending on Monday, which would block the funding of all loans and grants organizations while the administration investigated how those organizations spent their money.
But, yesterday, the White House rescinded freeze on federal grants.
During the time that the federal budget was frozen, however, many rumors and myths spread around MCHS scaring seniors in particular.
Even if the freeze on federal spending was not rescinded, school officials claim it would not have affected seniors getting money from the government for FAFSA, though it would have stopped funding to public colleges though.
“Monday, the executive order was issued that froze federal grants that went out to a variety of organizations to be distributed then or used by those organizations,” said Curtis Menke, MCHS’s college and career counselor. “The exceptions to that were any funds that went directly to individuals. Medicare made, Medicaid, federal Pell Grants and other similar things.
“So basically, if the money went directly from the federal government to a person that was not frozen, but if the money went from the government to an organization, then it was frozen.”
On Tuesday, the Trump administration said that the freeze will not halt the federal spending for Medicare, Social Security, student loans and food stamps.
“Federal Pell Grant money would have still been available,” Menke said, “however money that would have been distributed to schools via Special Education funds or public universities could have potentially been frozen today, prior to this, just prior to this recording, there was a rumor that the Illinois map grant would have been impacted by the Federal, by the Federal by the executive action, by the executive action budget freeze.” Says Menke.
Rumors spread at MCHS that the Illinois map grant program would not be funded due to this pause. Menke talks about what is really happening with the map grant.
“However I called the Illinois Student Assistance Commission,” Menke said, “which is the organization that oversees the Illinois map grant program, and two different individuals assured me that that program was not in the funds from those that program was not in jeopardy. And that was prior to what we just found out with the executive order being rescinded.”