To avoid a government shutdown, congressional leaders are set to pass another short-term continuing resolution (CR) that extends already delayed funding deadlines further into March. Leaders are hoping this will be the last CR needed to finalize FY 2024 appropriations.

Top lawmakers closed out negotiations on the Agriculture-FDA, Energy-Water, Military Construction-VA, Transportation-HUD, Interior-Environment and Commerce-Justice-Science bills, assigning all of those a deadline of March 8. These bills are expected to be considered in the House next week before the President Biden’s State of the Union Address on Thursday.

The next set of bills, now with a March 22 funding deadline, include Defense, Labor-HHS-Education, Homeland Security, Financial Services, State-Foreign Operations and Legislative Branch. This package includes funding for the Department of Education and the student aid programs.

In addition to extending the deadlines for final appropriations, the CR includes language to address a recent announcement from the Department about fixing a technical issue with the FAFSA need analysis and applies the funding saved by the provision to shore up the Pell Grant program baseline funding. The provision would clarify a floor for dependent student income in the Student Aid Index calculations, which determines Pell Grant eligibility. It sets the dependent student income floor at -$1,500, which matches the independent student floor, for 2024-25, then at $0 going forward. The savings from this change puts $7.7 billion back into the Pell Grant program over the next three fiscal years.

Colleges are already reeling from the delay of FAFSA implementation. If Congress does not finalize FY 2024 appropriations by the new March 22 deadline, colleges will not know how much student aid to provide low-income students through the Pell Grant, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, and Federal Work-Study programs. Without these allocations, low-income students will not have their financial aid information available to them to help make decisions about enrolling in college for the fall.