Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration on Thursday outlined their final agreement on legislation to overhaul the government's student-loan system, with the savings providing annual inflation-adjusted increases in the Pell Grant and billions of dollars in additional aid for higher education.

After months of delays, the proposal was approved by Democratic leaders as part of a strategy to help ensure passage of President Obama's health-care-reform legislation. The House of Representatives is expected to approve the combined student-aid and health-care plan this weekend, followed by the Senate.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan defended President Obama's proposed education budget for the 2011 fiscal year at a hearing held on Thursday by a panel of the U.S. House of Representatives. But a more immediate legislative issue -- the Obama administration's plan to end bank-based student lending -- emerged as the focus of the higher-education parts of the discussion.

What the classroom full of veterans wanted most was, as one of them put it, "to help our families understand what we went through." The course was in communication, and it was part of an educational program for veterans of the Vietnam war. The teacher -- my colleague in the federally funded program -- had asked them what they most wanted to learn, and that was their primary answer: to explain to those closest to them the hell they endured.