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Recission Package Passes

Much like the reconciliation bill earlier in the month, the Senate amended the Administration’s recission package and sent it back to the House for final approval. The measure, H.R.4 – Rescissions Act of 2025, has passed the House and is now headed to the President’s desk for signature.

The Administration proposed $9.4 billion in funding already appropriated to claw back claw back $1.1 billion previously allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, along with $7.9 billion dollars earmarked for international efforts to combat famine and disease.

The House approved the Administration’s proposal. The Senate amendment, which was led by Senator Eric Schmidt (R-MO), would preserve the following funding from cuts:

  • The amendment removes PEPFAR ($400 million) from the rescissions bill.
  • Protects funding for HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition (including polio) within the Global Health account;
  • Protects funding for countering PRC Influence Fund;
  • Protects funding for aid to Egypt and Jordan; and
  • Protects funding for the administration of U.S. commodity-based food aid, namely Food for Peace the McGovern-Dole.

The House passed the amended proposal.

The final bill is now waiting the President’s signature.

Student Loan Changes

After a marathon of overnight voting and intense intra-party negotiations, the Republican-controlled Congress has passed the long-anticipated “Big, Beautiful Bill” championed by President Trump. The sweeping legislation, signed into law on July 4, introduces significant changes across key policy areas—including taxation, defense, immigration, healthcare, and education.

One of the bill’s most consequential changes involves a complete restructuring of the federal student loan system, aimed at curbing government spending to offset substantial tax reductions. Although initial proposals varied between the House and Senate, lawmakers ultimately reached a compromise that is now law.

New Borrowing Limits (Effective July 1, 2026):

  • Graduate students: $20,500 annually, $100,000 lifetime cap
  • Professional students: $50,000 annually, $200,000 lifetime cap
  • Parents (combined per student): $20,000 annually, $65,000 lifetime cap
  • Lifetime borrowing cap for all students: $257,000
  • Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS programs: Eliminated
  • Undergraduate annual borrowing limits: Unchanged

Repayment Changes: Starting July 1, 2026, all existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans will be discontinued for new borrowers. Instead, two new plans will be introduced:

  1. Standard Repayment Plan: Payment periods range from 10 to 25 years, depending on the original loan balance
  2. Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP): Payments set at 1% to 10% of income, with remaining balance forgiven after 30 years

Current borrowers can remain on existing repayment plans through July 1, 2028, after which they will be transitioned to RAP or a revised version of the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan.

See the table below for more:

OBBBA Student Loan Chart

OBBB Signed Into Law

President Donald Trump signed his “One Big, Beautiful Bill” into law during the July 4th picnic on the White House grounds, enacting a sweeping multitrillion-dollar legislative package that reflects the core of his policy agenda. The measure passed with near-unanimous Republican support in both chambers of Congress following months of negotiations and intense pressure from the president and GOP leadership.

The legislation extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and boosts funding for immigration enforcement and national defense. To balance the increased spending, the bill imposes substantial reductions to domestic programs, slashing Medicaid and food assistance by $1.2 trillion and cutting billions from federal higher education funding. According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will increase the national deficit by $3.3 trillion over the next decade and result in 11.8 million additional people losing health coverage.

Despite internal dissent and unanimous Democratic opposition, Trump succeeded in pushing the massive reconciliation bill through Congress in time for the July 4th deadline.

 

“Big, Beautiful Bill” Passes Senate

After a record-breaking vote-a-rama lasting over 24 hours, the U.S. Senate has passed President Trump’s expansive tax and spending reconciliation package — a major step toward his goal of signing the legislation into law by July 4. The bill encompasses the majority of the President’s legislative agenda.

The final vote was 51–50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. Republican Senators Susan Collins (ME), Thom Tillis (NC), and Rand Paul (KY) joined all Senate Democrats in opposing the measure. Senators Collins and Tillis cited the bill’s Medicaid cuts and their potential impact on rural hospitals as key reasons for their “no” votes. A proposed amendment from Collins to establish a rural hospital stabilization fund failed in a procedural vote Tuesday morning. Tillis recently announced his decision to retire at the end of his term after facing political fallout from President Trump over his earlier vote against the motion to proceed.

For much of the overnight session, the bill’s fate remained in doubt. Republican leadership engaged in extensive negotiations with undecided senators, both behind closed doors and on the Senate floor. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (AK), who had withheld support for much of the process, ultimately voted in favor after securing Alaska-specific carve-outs from certain provisions in the legislation.

The legislative battle now shifts to the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to bring the bill to a vote as early as Wednesday. The initial version of the package narrowly passed the House, where Republicans hold only a slim majority. Several members have already expressed concern over changes made by the Senate.

The conservative wing of the House GOP — particularly the House Freedom Caucus — has objected to the bill’s suspension of the debt ceiling and what it views as insufficient spending reductions. The House GOP’s budget plan called for $2 trillion in spending reductions to match $4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The Senate bill cuts just over $1.5 trillion but spends the full amount on taxes.

Meanwhile, more moderate Republicans have raised alarms over the deep Medicaid cuts included in the Senate-passed version. Senate Republicans approved a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, which is far harsher than the original House plan.

Members of the House have been called back to Washington from their July 4 recess to begin consideration of the revised legislation. While its final passage remains uncertain, Speaker Johnson and President Trump have demonstrated a strong ability to unify their caucus in the past.

The Office of Federal Relations will continue to monitor developments and provide updates as this process unfolds.

Byrd Bath Strikes Medicaid Proposals

In yet another setback for Senate Republicans, the Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that several key Medicaid provisions in the GOP’s sweeping budget reconciliation bill violate the Byrd Rule, effectively stripping them from the legislation.

The Byrd Rule, a procedural safeguard named after the late Senator Robert Byrd, restricts what can be included in budget reconciliation bills. It prohibits provisions that are considered “extraneous” to the federal budget, meaning they must primarily affect government spending or revenue and not merely serve policy goals.

Among the provisions deemed to be in violation of the Byrd Rule are restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers and ACA subsidies for certain immigrants as well as, perhaps most importantly, limits on Medicaid provider taxes, which are state-imposed taxes on healthcare providers that are then used to draw down more federal Medicaid funding.

The Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, proposed lowering the provider tax cap to 3.5% of net patient revenue over the next 6 years in Medicaid-expansion states, and barring non-expansion states from raising provider taxes beyond their current levels.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this proposal would save the government hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years. Hospitals around the country, however, warned that this could devastate rural and underserved hospitals that rely heavily on Medicaid funding. The potential impacts of Medicaid cuts were a point of contention within the Senate GOP, with members such as Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voicing concerns over the cuts.
Republicans will now have to work to rewrite these provisions to be Byrd Rule compliant if they wish to keep them in the bill. While they do have the option to overrule the Parliamentarian, this move is controversial, and Majority Leader John Thune has said that it is not on the table.
With the self-imposed July 4th deadline for sending the “Big, Beautiful Bill” to President Trump’s desk looming, Senate Republicans will be scrambling over the weekend to make crucial decisions on the future of the Medicaid portion of this bill. If it does manage to pass the Senate, its chances of success are still wary in the House, where many members are unhappy with Senate changes.
The Federal Relations Office will keep you updated with changes as the process unfolds.