Senate HELP Committee Introduces Draft Reconciliation Bill

• On June 10, 2025, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee released its draft version of budget reconciliation legislation targeting higher education and other programs.
• Both the House and Senate versions propose major changes to student loans, including eliminating the Grad PLUS loan program and PSLF eligibility and capping federal borrowing.
• The Senate proposal caps professional loans at $50,000 per year and $200,000 total while the House version caps professional loans at $150,000 total with no annual cap.
• The Senate’s accountability provision significantly differs from the House's risk-sharing approach. Under the Senate proposal, a professional program would lose eligibility for federal student loans if its graduates’ average earnings ten years after enrollment fall below the average salary of 25–34-year-old bachelor’s degree holders. In contrast, the House bill proposed a risk-sharing model based on a debt-to-earnings ratio that financially penalizes institutions for unpaid student loans incurred by their graduates.
• Last week, the House also moved to address potential Senate roadblocks for their reconciliation bill through adoption of a “deeming resolution” incorporating technical fixes to ensure their bill complies with the Senate’s Byrd Rule.
• For more information on the HELP Committee proposal and a comparison with the House bill, see AACOM’s summary. We will continue to advocate against provisions that will harm the OME community and encourage you to contact your congressional offices to share how these changes will make it harder to train the next generation of doctors.

Take Action!