Who is going to pay?

Congress is considering a scale back of college grants for hundreds of thousands of low-income students. I've been trying to think of an alternative for students who will no longer be able to afford college. Should I just consider them out of luck or should I blame them for not having been born in wealthier families? I'm sure somebody somewhere has a complicated theory explaining the virtue of cutting spending here, but as long as we're keeping kids from getting the help they need to go to college, let's be honest about why and talk about it openly.

I'm sure someone could come up with an explanation for not adjusting to the budget shortfall, but let's be sincere about this; we couldn't come up with the extra $300 million needed to keep the old aid formula in place for another year, so kids are going to suffer. Meanwhile, tuition is rising across the nation. I’m tired of talking about policy without addressing the real effects policies have on people—as though people are just players in a model. Let’s be clear that while there are always trade-offs in our decisions, real people get hurt. We should talk about how we’ve hurt them and why we chose to help others instead of them.

What is the virtue of spending $380 million to track the entry and exit of immigrants to protect us all from terrorism when we fail to protect lower income families from slipping into poverty? Is protecting all kids from a future of economic grief not at least equally virtuous?
Even if I can be convinced that tax policies can increase jobs and economic prosperity for the lower economic classes, it’s a fact that jobs and economic stability don’t appear overnight. There will be kids and families who will lose hope of improving their standards of living because they lost funding for college this year. If we’re going to let many slip by until a new budget or alternative comes along, let’s say so--let’s be clear that they’ll be sacrificed. For a government that touts accountability in education, they suck at practicing it.