Reconciliation bill threatens education, including college access

The budget reconciliation bill—President Donald Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill that threatens to harm working families in favor of giving tax cuts to the very wealthy—is still making its way through Congress, so it’s not yet law. But even if the Senate manages to moderate some of its worst elements, there are still huge cuts in the “big, ugly bill,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten at a virtual teach-in June 11.

For example, “We predict that there’s going to be 14 to 15 million people who lose their basic healthcare,” she said. Cuts to Medicaid are especially harmful, as AFT member and nurse Redetha Abrahams-Nichols describes here. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would also take a big hit; the crucial role SNAP plays in the lives of AFT members and their families is outlined here.

And the bill could decimate education services, forever altering the role our schools and colleges play in equalizing opportunity and educating young professionals. Why? To give tax cuts to billionaires, said Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), who hosted the teach-in. “Trump and the Republicans’ playbook steals from working people to give to the wealthy.” That means poor, middle-class and working-class people “are taking it on the chin,” said Weingarten.

Other participants agreed. They were Liz Becker, IRA campaign coordinator at the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada; David Green, Region 2B director for the United Auto Workers; Michael Linden, director of Families Over Billionaires; Dani Parent, co-executive director of the West Virginia Citizen Action Group; and Joe Radosevich, counselor at Center for American Progress.

Harm is coming for the schools

Participants said much is at stake for education in particular. Trump is trying to shutter the Department of Education, and his administration is proposing billions of dollars in cuts to K-12 schools and higher education. At a time when we need to invest in early education; teacher pipelines; school facilities; career and technical education; cutting-edge literacy, math and STEM; community schools; and broader access to college, the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill invests in none of these. 

Here is what the bill would do if it were passed in its current form:

• Cut Medicaid, the fourth-largest federal source of funds for K-12 schools.
• Cut SNAP, which is linked to eligibility for free school meals. That means many children could lose access to school meals and/or be required to fill out additional paperwork to access them.
• Create the first national voucher program for K-12 private schools, which would provide 100 percent reimbursement for contributions to private schools. This incentive would convince billionaires to redirect their tax dollars away from the federal programs those dollars would normally fund—things like disaster relief, infrastructure, food safety, medical research and public schools—and toward private schools that are under no obligation to serve all students. 

The bill in its current iteration also includes more than $300 billion in cuts to higher education, so that going to college would be less affordable and paying back student loans would be more expensive. The bill would:

• Take away or gut borrower-friendly options for paying back student loans, specifically income-driven repayment plans (including the Saving on a Valuable Education plan, known as SAVE) currently available to 12.5 million borrowers. Both income-driven repayment and SAVE set monthly payments according to a person’s current income; SAVE currently caps payments at 5 percent of a person’s income, but borrowers could see their payments triple under this bill.
• Force 425,824 students into private loans lacking consumer protections, by eliminating grad PLUS loans. The bill also institutes new caps on parent PLUS loans and overall caps on federal loans.
• Damage Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the program that cancels student debt for people who work in public service for a period of 10 years. While PSLF is not directly attacked, the bill could limit access to PSLF-eligible loans (federal loans) by forcing students into private loans (see above), which are not PSLF-eligible. 
• End “borrower defense” relief for nearly all students who were scammed by predatory colleges. This policy cancels student debt for people who attended for-profit institutions that provided a substandard education and left them with heavy debt burdens—and no job skills to earn the money to pay them off.
• Shoehorn all of higher education into a job-training model. As currently written, the bill’s new “accountability” metric cuts off access to higher education programs based on the earnings of their graduates. Programs that prepare early childhood educators, teachers, social workers and others in critical but underpaid professions will be punished regardless of the quality of the education they provide, and lifelong learning would be threatened as well.
• Raid university endowments. The tax on university endowments would go as high as 21 percent.

The panel of speakers expressed outrage over the changes anticipated under the reconciliation bill and vowed to continue to advocate for a better path forward. Weingarten urged participants to call and email their elected representatives and to participate in nonviolent street protests.

“This is a moment when our democracy is really at risk and at stake,” said Weingarten. “Whether we’re fighting the reconciliation bill or whether we’re fighting to have a democracy, that is what we have to do as we the people.”

[Virginia Myers]