Parents and students everywhere, especially faculty and staff at higher-education institutions around St. Louis, have reason to be very worried. GOP legislators on Capitol Hill, desperate to find financing for their proposed $1.5 trillion tax-cut plan, want to target certain college tuition benefits that make higher education affordable for thousands of Americans.

Their plan would put higher education financially out of reach for many of the working-class people President Donald Trump claims to be fighting for. All over the country, schools offer their faculty, custodial and clerical staffers a chance to improve the lives of their children by giving them substantial tuition breaks if they choose to attend that school. The GOP proposes to tax those tuition breaks as income.

The impact would be so serious, Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, went to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, on Wednesday night to press for the measure's removal ahead of Thursday's House vote on the plan. It remains to be seen whether the tuition measure will survive as the House and Senate reconcile their two versions. But options are dwindling as Republicans scrounge for dollars to bring the tax plan's cost down to the required $1.5 trillion deficit-expansion threshold.

Davis' 13th District, in southwestern Illinois, has eight colleges and universities. St. Louis has twice that number.

The University of Illinois provided $184 million in tuition assistance to make higher education affordable to its 1,387 faculty and staff, nearly all of whom earn less than $75,000 a year. Washington University offers a 100 percent tuition "remission" to its regular full-time employees taking undergraduate courses and up to eight semesters of tax-free tuition assistance to their dependents. St. Louis University offers significant discounts to employees and their dependents.

"That building services or mid-level clerical worker who has worked the same job at the university for 20 years just to afford a college education for their kid or the many graduate assistants teaching in exchange for tuition should be taken into consideration when discussing the qualified tuition reductions," Davis wrote to Brady last week.

In addition, the GOP plan would eliminate deductions for interest on student loans, which could affect millions of students, graduates and their families.

Such breaks are a big component in the efforts by various educational institutions to diversify their student bodies by making sure college remains affordable to working-class families.

The same provisions in the GOP tax plan could apply to private grade schools around the country that also offer tuition breaks to teachers and workers. These breaks can amount to tens of thousands of dollars a year for the affected families.

Congressional Republicans are desperate for a legislative victory. But as Davis urged his colleagues, the people seeking to improve their lives with higher education shouldn't be penalized in the process.

FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH

CREATORS.COM