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Finally someone is pointing at the elephant in the room. When I look at my student billing account, I see $60,000 waived under my grad "tuition waiver" every year. Should I feel thankful, or completely dumbfounded by the fact that they'd consider charging me that much to be a grad student in the first place?

I don't think that school's will "just" be able to raise the overhead on grants. Congress has no plans to increase grant funding. Instead, grants will become more competitive. The net effect, then, is (1) unnecessarily increased competition for grad school, (2) defunding of education and research, and (3) decreased global competitiveness. I think it's a real problem.

By taxing or putting extra burden on all but the students that absolutely can't afford to pay tuition or elevated taxes you're making an already sketchy financial proposition even sketchier. There were a few articles recently lamenting the declining numbers of American grad students. Measures like these are only going to cripple these numbers further.