Program uses the federal tax code To offer vouchers that students can use to visit private secular or religious schools, as well as for qualification costs for education.
“Parents have to decide where their children go to school. This bill helps them do this,” Bill Cassidy, R-LA, said in Senator. statement After the Chamber approved the changes of the Senate.
The Senate has changed the original proposal for the Chamber, now requires countries to join the program, thus not becoming a truly national program. Blue states where vouchers have little support may not participate and even in more conservative states support is mixed – Voters have recently rejected Measures for voting for school vouchers in Kentucky and Nebraska.
This may partly be due to fears that voucher programs can disperse local public resource schools, because when students leave a system of public schools, they take funding with themselves.
“This is not just a failure of politics – it is a moral shame,” Becky Pringle, President of the National Education Association, the largest union of teachers in the country, said in a statementS “Trump and Congress Republicans undermine our public schools and every student in them.”
The new federal program will reward people who make charity donations for what are known as scholarship organizations (SGO). Their reward: Tax credit for a dollar per dollar.
SGO will then allocate donated money in the form of scholarships that students use at a number of expenses, including training, books and certain costs for a home school.
Unlike some of the country the most., smaller Voucher programs, this federal version will not be limited to lower-income families. Instead, it will be available to households that earn or less than 300% of the average gross income of an area. So, in an area of a country where the average gross income is $ 75,000, every child in a household, which earns less than $ 225,000, can qualify.
The price of a program like this is difficult to measure, especially when refusing a warning, leaving countries to decide whether they will participate. However, the non -partisan joint committee on taxation estimates that vouchers can cost the federal government nearly $ 26 billion lost tax revenue over the next decade.
Medicaid and K-12 schools are changed
More than 37 million children have been enrolled in either Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a federal program that provides affordable health insurance for pregnant mothers and children who live just above the Medicaid poverty threshold.
A big beautiful bill introduces strict Medicaid eligibility requirements, including a more frequent eligibility check and the first of its kind national job requirement, although the parents of children aged 13 and younger are released.
In addition, federal health costs by about $ 1 trillion per decade, according to Non -party Congress Budget Service (CBO).
As NPR there is before reports, State experiments with job requirements have been struck by administrative problems, such as the loss of enrollees losing coverage due to documents problems and budget exceeding.
How will all this affect the K-12 students?
“When there is more bureaucracy, we know it is more difficult for families,” said Joan Alker, head of the Center for Children and Families of the University of Georgetown, before the NPR before receiving the bill.
CBO estimates that nearly 12 million people will lose their health coverage as a result of changes to the final bill.
Medicaid is also the fourth largest source of funding for K-12 schools, according to the Aasa School Winders Association. Schools receive money to help provide services For low -income students enrolled in Medicaid or Chip, as well as for students with disabilities.
In exploration Published earlier this year, AASA has requested over 1000 leaders in the school area of all 50 states and Colombia district how they use Medicaid funds. Most of the regions (86%) said Medicaid funds supported salaries for school health officers such as nurses, psychologists, professional and physical therapists and speech pathologists. More than half said Medicaid helps to fund mental and behavioral health services in school.
Asked how their areas would deal with the loss of funds, 80% of the respondents predicted redundancies to the school health staff and more than half were expecting a reduction in services and resources for students.
Nutrition cuts would also affect the eligibility for free school eating
Program to support extra meals (SNAP) which, according to the US Department of Agriculture, helps to pay for grocery More than 15 million children In the US, it will also undergo significant changes in the coming years.
A Big Beautiful Account shrinks the number of people who are released from SNAP’s working requirements. Katie Berg, a senior analyst of the food and political food policy policy, told the NPR before the bill was adopted, “Studies have repeatedly shown that (not), they increase people’s employment. This does not increase their revenue. This simply reduces people from SNAP and leaves them hungry.”
When children lose access to SNAP benefits, they also lose their automatic enrollment in free meals at school.
The new law will reduce about $ 186 billion from SNAP in 10 years, according to CBO. Berg’s organization forecasts“About 1 million children will see nutritional assistance of their families, reduced or discontinued.”
For the first time in the history of the SNAP, the Federal Government also transferred some of the costs of countries.
Whether this change in the financing by the federal government is a good idea is “controversial”, Kevin Corinth, who studies poverty and safety safety programs at the American Institute of Conservative Enterprise (AEI), before the NPR before the bill is adopted. Although he pointed out a potential upward: this can force conditions to have “more skin in the game”.
One potential disadvantage, According to CBOis that some countries “would change benefits or eligibility or possibly leave (SNAP) entirely because of the increased costs.”
Increase in a children’s tax credit
A Big Beautiful Account comes with a modest increase in tax credit for parents. The Dental tax credit, which is already limited to $ 2,000 per child, will increase to $ 2200. However, it requires at least one parent and all qualified children to provide valid social security numbers.
And as with the current tax credit for children, this expansion will only be available to families who earn enough income to rank and therefore inaccessible to families with low and moderate incomes.
What to know about the big changes in federal student loans
The law will Press the reset button under federal student loan policy.
For graduates, new loan limits will make it difficult for borrowers with lower and average income to go to better graduation programs. The old GRAD PLUS programWhich allowed students to borrow to the price of their postgraduate program will be closed on July 1, 2026. Then the graduation of postgraduates will be limited to $ 20,500 a year with a $ 100,000 -dollar graduate loan limit, a large decline from the previous limit of $ 138,500.
Borrowers working for professional higher education (ie Medical or Law Faculty) will be limited to $ 50,000 a year and their life cap increases from $ 138,500 to $ 200,000.
Parents and carers who use plus loans to help students pay for college will also see new loan restrictions. They will be limited to $ 20,000 a year and, in general, to $ 65,000 per child.
The law also sets a new lifelong limit for students and Graduates of loans, at $ 257,500 per person.
Republicans also agreed to make major changes to the repayment plans, gradually eliminating most of them, including generous plan to save Biden’s era.
After July 1, 2026, the new borrowers will have only two repayment options: 1.) A new income-based plan that requires borrowers to pay at least $ 10 per month and offers cancellation of a loan after 30 years of repayment, or 2) a new window repayment with fixed monthly payments for 10-25 years, as long as a large debt-
The older and current borrowers will have several more choices, at least for the time being, which will undoubtedly be aware of the borrowers and companies serving the loans that need to make sense of all these changes. You can find a more detailed explanation of these hereS
Changes to Pell Grants for low -income students
The bill is expanding Pell’s grants that help students with low -income students pay for college, include job training programs, which is a profit for colleges in the Community, which offer a variety of certificates. It also turns the admissibility for all Pell recipients: since July 2026, students who have a full -fledged scholarship will no longer have the right to receive Pell grants. The bill is also fully funded Existing Pell Grateful Assistance LackS
Profit Test for College Accountability
In order to encourage colleges to provide a good return on investment, the bill connects school access to federal student loans with how much their graduates earn.
If the bachelor’s program fails, the profit test – which means that their students earn less than someone with a high school diploma – this may lose access to federal loans. An analysis shows that this would have the most impact on two -year degree programs, although federal data indicates Students from the College in Community are less relying on federal student loans.
The measure follows in the footsteps of a Similar regulation known as profitable employment A rule that was developed by the Obama administration and is re -established by Biden.
The final version of this new accountability policy does not go so far As the version of the house did -This project includes a risk sharing plan in which colleges will pay a penalty based on the debt of a federal loan that their students fail to pay off.
Higher tax on college donations
Colleagues with donations will already be taxed at a higher rate.
The bill increases the tax rate from 1.4% to 8%, depending on the donation of the college.
Harvard University’s donation that is currently fighting multitude legitimately battles against the Trump administration, total over $ 52 billionS Based on the formula of the new law, which puts Harvard in the highest tax group for donations, for institutions with a donation of over $ 2 million to a home student.
For small private colleges there is a depletion: institutions with less than 3000 students are exempt from the tax. The previous release was 500 students.
