Editor’s note: This article was updated at 8 a.m. on June 30, 2025.
The Senate parliamentarian has approved a modified version of workforce Pell provisions in the budget reconciliation bill that the Senate Budget Committee released late on Friday.
Last week, the Senate parliamentarian found that the initial workforce Pell provisions in the bill 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.
The biggest changes in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions 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.
