The Iowa Senate will debate a bill to cut $65.6 million from the education budget today, $23 million more than Gov. Tom Vilsack originally recommended.

The reduction to the $980 million education budget, down 6.7 percent from this year, slashes the ISU budget $15.8 million. The University of Iowa will take a $19.3 million hit, the University of Northern Iowa will be cut by $5.5 million and several educational programs will be cut.

The bill passed the joint Education Budget Subcommittee and the Senate Appropriations Committee last week along Republican-dominated party lines.

Along with the budget cut, the bill also eliminates the College Work-Study Program, the Agriculture Health and Safety Program, Jobs for America’s Grads, Americorps, Employability Skills Assessments and Education Innovation Fund.

“We cut programs that weren’t performing up to par,” said Sen. Kitty Rehberg, R-Rowley. “Many of [the work-study] jobs weren’t being fulfilled anyway. As long as the economy was good, we thought that this was a program we could cut – [students] can get paid more off campus.”

Rehberg, vice chairwoman for the senate appropriations subcommittee on education, said two of these programs, Americorps and Jobs for America’s Grads, are new programs that had not lived up to the expectations of the legislators and were deemed no longer needed.

“The elimination of the work-study program broke my heart,” said Sen. Johnie Hammond, D-Ames. “It’s the most democratic financial-aid package we have.”

Hammond, member of the Senate appropriations committee, said she helped launch the program 16 years ago, and it is a program in which both private and public colleges can participate.

The change in the projected budget cuts for education came after a debate between Democrats and Republicans over the spending of $120 million of Iowa’s Economic Emergency Fund.

“We don’t want to cut education any more than we have to,” said Sen. Wally Horn, D-Cedar Rapids. “The Republicans are saying we must cut all of it and not use the fund.”

Horn, ranking member of the senate appropriations subcommittee on education, said the governor is holding strong on this issue so it doesn’t hit education so hard. He said if they make money available from the emergency fund, tuition increases for students won’t be as high.

“We are not in an economic emergency,” Rehberg said. “[An economic emergency] comes when we cannot fund prisons, schools and Medicaid recipients.”

Hammond said she predicts Vilsack will veto both the education and human services bill.

“We have been totally shut out of negotiations,” she said. Republicans have closed the doors on communication with Democratic legislators and the governor, Hammond said.

Legislators also are concerned that the budget decreases will set a precedent to cut education.

“Hopefully this is a one-year thing – we can’t afford to do this to education two years in a row,” Rehberg said. “This is where tax cuts come into place.”

She said tax cuts will give Iowans more money in their pockets to spend on products and services in Iowa, which will boost revenue. The state is only expecting a 4.5 percent increase next year, Rehberg said, which will only begin to cover the cost of living increases for state employees and scheduled budget increases for state departments.

Horn said tax cuts are depleting the state’s budget, and the state has given more than $800 million in tax cuts during the past five years.

“The one thing we need to do for a while is give no more tax cuts until we can get our economy all straightened out,” he said.

Just because the economy is stable, Horn said, doesn’t mean legislators have to give a tax cut. He said he hopes the state can institute a tuition freeze next year, so the state will pick up the extra cost instead of passing it along to the students.

When faculty are lost, so is a school’s reputation, Hammond said. People all over the country are hearing that Iowa’s universities are losing funding, she said, it will take a while to recover from that.

“To cut our universities like this is really terrible,” Horn said. “To be able to get a quality education after this will be very difficult. We shouldn’t cut any more than we really have to.”