September 14, 2009 4:24PM # Full House to Vote on Lie of a Bill By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) is expected to head to the full House of Representatives for a vote tomorrow, and as it does there is yet another Congressional Budget Office estimate upping its expected cost. The bill that sponsor George Miller (D‑CA) shamelessly says will be a taxpayer-money saver continues to be exposed as very much the opposite. [As you might recall](https://www.cato.org/2009/08/11/things-grow-worse-so-fast-these-days/), Miller has been touting SAFRA as legislation that would fund all kinds of new or expanded federal programs while allocating $10 billion to deficit reduction. But the CBO has never agreed with that. [First, the CBO identified ](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10479/hr3221.pdf)a likely net cost to taxpayers of about $6 billion over ten years, and that was without including any deficit reduction. Then it estimated that SAFRA would cost [an additional $33 billion ](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10295/Gregg_StudentLoans__09-07-27.pdf)after accounting for lending risk. And now, CBO estimates that the cost of expanding Pell grants could be almost [$11 billion greater ](http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10557/hr3221KlineLtr.pdf)than originally estimated. If you add all of those things together, the cost of SAFRA has flipped from a promised $10 billion savings to a $50 billion loss. In fairness, the last estimate comes from a change in the baseline used for Pell outlays, going from March to August 2009. The increased cost estimate could very well reflect a higher-than-usual Pell expense because of the economic downturn, and the additional cost would not materialize if and when things improve. Nonetheless, this just adds to a very clear message about SAFRA: Far from relieving taxpayers, it’s going to deliver yet one more punishing blow. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).