Today Senate Democrats defeated a procedural vote on a $1.6 trillion COVID-19 spending package. Democrats seek to include additional provisions whereas Senate Republicans call for a quick vote. Negotiations continue with Senate and the White House. Full story at Politico.
News and updates
Senate Democrats Release Outline of Student Assistance Plan
Countering the Republican efforts to assist students that were included in the “Phase 3” bill, Senate Democrats released a summary of their own proposal on the issue. The legislative text for the plan has not yet been released.
The summary of the plan, as prepared by the Democratic staff, is here and a press release about the proposal is here.
Again, while the legislative text is not yet available, the centerpiece of the plan is the federal repayment of student loans during the COVID-19 crisis.
Broader Higher Education Community Looks to Engage with Federal Government to Address Community-Wide Challenges
Yesterday, the broader higher education community sent to Congress a series of recommendations and requests for assistance aimed at stabilizing the entire enterprise as it tries to cope with COVID-19. The requests fall into a number of distinct categories:
- One set of requests addresses the immediate financial challenges facing both students and institutions.
- Another set of requests focuses on the unique circumstances that research universities face as they deal with trying to mitigate the impact on research.
- The third set focuses on tax-related provisions that could assist students, families, and institutions.
Major Changes to Student Loans, K-12 Testing, Due to COVID-19
Today President Trump announced the below changes affecting the Department of Education as a result of COVID-19:
- The Department of Education will not enforce standardized testing for K-12 institutions this school year.
- Federal student loan borrowers may suspend payments for up to 60 days, retroactive from March 13th, 2020. The borrower must contact their loan servicer to make the change.
- All federal student loan interest rates will be automatically set to 0% for the next 60 days.
The changes are designed to allow school districts to cope with long-term closures, as well as allow loan borrowers to offset financial hardships as a result of the COVID-19 national emergency.
Text and Section-by-Section Summaries of “Phase 3” Now Available
The text of the Senate Republican stimulus bill, “Phase 3,” has been released and is available here.
In addition, several chairmen of the committees that would have jurisdiction over different parts of the bill have released summaries of the parts of the bill that they would oversee. The section-by-section summaries of parts of the bill that are most relevant to UW and other universities are provided below:
- Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee summary of higher education- and healthcare-related provisions
- Finance Committee summary of health-related provisions in its jurisdiction
- Finance Committee summary of tax provisions in the legislation
As noted previously, this is the initial proposal from the Senate Republican and it will need to be modified along the way as they begin to negotiate with Congressional Democrats, who will also have their own priorities.