Want to know what the Trump Administration is likely to do on education? In addition to watching personnel moves, you should be watching the federal budget reconciliation process.
What is it? And how does it work?
Rick Hess has an interview up at EdWeek with Lindsay Fryer, the president of Lodestone DC, explaining how reconciliation works. Fryer worked on both the House and Senate education committees and served as the Senate’s lead negotiator on the Every Student Succeeds Act. The whole interview is worth checking out, but here’s the key part:
Rick: For those of us who aren’t up to speed on the details of federal lawmaking, what is budget reconciliation anyway?
Lindsay: The budget-reconciliation process is an expedited, easier way to legislate on taxes, spending, or the debt limit. Reconciliation bills can only address “mandatory” spending like Social Security and Medicare. This means that discretionary K-12 programs like Title I—aimed at disadvantaged students—and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act probably won’t be affected. Instead, the education programs most likely to be affected are federal student loans and perhaps a portion of Pell Grants. Reconciliation matters so much because it isn’t subject to the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass legislation. With reconciliation, the House and Senate can act with a simple majority. Given that Republicans have 53 seats in the Senate and a House majority, they have the ability to pass ambitious changes to the student-loan system and repeal some of Biden’s student-loan regulations or to enact a federal school choice tax credit via reconciliation.
In other words, the reconciliation process is not likely to be used to close down the U.S. Department of Education, or to fight culture war battles. But it is the way Republicans might use to create a federal school choice tax credit. I’ll have more to say about that soon…