The Senate Budget Committee late on Friday released a modified version of its budget reconciliation bill that continues to include language establishing workforce Pell grants. The release of the new text comes one day after the news that the Senate parliamentarian found that workforce Pell did not comply with the rules governing budget reconciliation legislation.
The new workforce Pell provisions are almost identical to the prior version save for one change: they would no longer make non-accredited providers eligible to participate in the program. This is the one aspect of the previous version that the American Association of Community Colleges had expressed strong concerns about, so should this change hold, it would be a very positive outcome for community colleges.
As of Sunday evening at our press time, however, the parliamentarian had not passed judgment on the revised version. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee staff were optimistic it would pass muster, but that is not certain at this time.
The biggest changes in the HELP committee’s section of the bill were made to provisions changing loan repayment options. The parliamentarian had determined that those changes could only be applied to new borrowers after July 1, 2026, and not to current borrowers. This would significantly reduce the budget savings that Senate Republicans were expecting from those provisions. The changes made in the new version of the bill appear aimed at achieving some level of savings from loans to current borrowers.
