Congress continues to move forward with the budget reconciliation process, with multiple House committees marking up their versions of the bill last week. As a reminder, both the House and the Senate have passed identical budget resolutions, but the instructions for the House and the Senate are very different, with the House receiving instructions to make significant cuts to human service programs to offset the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts.

Leadership of the House and Senate have set a target deadline of July 4th to have the reconciliation process completed, with the bill signed by the President by then. Although the House has started its markups, there is still a long way to go in the process.

Education. On Tuesday, April 29th, the House Committee on Education and Workforce passed legislation to advance its portion of the 2025 budget resolution. The Committee was instructed to find $330 billion in savings, and did so largely through cuts to higher education grants. The legislation would:

  • increase the number of credits required to meet the definition of full-time enrollment for Pell Grant eligibility;
  • eliminate Pell Grants for students who are enrolled less than full-time;
  • eliminate new subsidized student loans; and
  • require institutions of higher education to repay portions of unpaid loans

These changes would put additional burden on non-traditional students, particularly those who have to work full-time or who are parenting. Many young adults from foster care would be impacted by these changes.

Immigration. On Wednesday, April 30, the House Judiciary Committee marked up and passed its reconciliation bill related to the Administration’s immigration priorities; you can find a comprehensive analysis from the National Immigration Law Center here.

Some of the most alarming provisions include:

  • Family detention and jailing of immigrants on an unimaginable scale: The bill provides $45 billion to build immigration jails for families and adults – more than 13 times ICE’s FY24 detention budget. The bill explicitly eliminates any restrictions on how long the government can jail a child, undoing current policy.
  • Tens of billions for disappearances: The bill provides upwards of $27 billion for immigration agents and operations related to enforcement and removal. Increased removal and mass deportation will lead to more children being separated from their parents and primary caregivers.
  • Cruel targeting of unaccompanied children: The bill provides CBP with dramatic authority to coerce young children who arrive at the U.S. border without a parent to return back to the country they fled, alone. It also includes provisions requiring children’s families to pay massive for their time detained in government custody and funds government officials “to conduct an examination of the unaccompanied child for gang-related markings,” essentially allowing strip searches for children.
  • Asylum penalty: A person seeking asylum in the United States will have to pay an “application fee” of at least $1,000 and at least another $550 every six months to get work authorization. The bill prohibits any fee waivers.

On the whole, this bill will result in children and caregivers who are immigrants experiencing more trauma and separation.

On Tuesday, April 29, the House Homeland Security Committee passed a reconciliation bill that will spend $69 billion on border enforcement, the largest portion ($51 billion) spent on finishing the border wall. See the summary from NILC here.

Medicaid, SNAP, SSBG and TANF. There are still many questions regarding core human service programs at risk in reconciliation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee (Medicaid), Agriculture Committee (SNAP) and Ways and Means Committee (SSBG, TANF, and taxes) have all pushed their markups to next week at the earliest, and bill text won’t be available until a day or two before the markup.

Proposed cuts to Medicaid have continued to be a problem for the majority party, with several members speaking out against steep cuts for certain populations. The Energy and Commerce Committee received instructions to find $880 billion in savings, and they simply cannot get to a number that high without taking away benefits from people, despite their talk of tackling “waste, fraud and abuse.”

SNAP, too, is a sticking point for some of the more moderate members of the majority party, as constituents and advocacy groups alike have raised the alarm about the cost of cutting SNAP (see the webinar further below for more).

The Ways and Means Committee, where the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program live, will be the last committee to mark up their bill, as the scope and breadth of the tax package will depend on the savings that the other committees can secure. SSBG and TANF are vital to child welfare, accounting for more than a quarter of all federal child welfare funding.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is committed to passing the full reconciliation package before the Memorial Day recess. The Senate will then take up the House package.