Permanent School Choice? The Senate Just Said Yes
PERMANENT SCHOOL CHOICE?
THE SENATE JUST SAID YES
School Choice is here to stay. If the Senate gets its way, at least.
Just moments ago, the Senate Finance Committee released its version of the Big, Beautiful Bill. Not only did they keep the scholarship tax credit in the bill, they made it better – and permanent.
The House had funded the tax credit for 4 years. After that it would have to be renewed, a difficult task. The Senate version, however, doesn’t sunset so it would take an act of Congress for the credit to expire.
Ever since the House passed its version of the bill last month, we at Agudah, together with our allies have been meeting with Senators and key policymakers asking them to make necessary improvements.
We asked. They delivered.
Thank you to all of those who joined us in Washington, met with members of Congress in your districts, or helped generate tens of thousands of emails. In all of our meetings with Senators and their staff last week, they were familiar with the issue because of that outreach. Thanks to the advocacy efforts of our supporters and allies, the Senate responded positively to many of our requests:
- Increases the allocation from $20 Billion
- Lengthened the number of years of the proposal
- Removed misleading and harmful special education language
- Protected religious liberty and private school autonomy
What happens next?
The various parts of the reconciliation bill will be joined together and brought to the floor of the Senate for a vote as early as next week. Reconciliation bills have a unique feature that the Senate Parliamentarian can remove things from the bill that don’t comply with those particular rules.
Once the language is deemed acceptable, reconciliation bills only need a simple majority of 51 votes to pass. Since the bill doesn’t match what the House passed, the differences must be worked out so that both chambers pass the exact same language. We will be working to get the best language in the bill before the final draft is passed.
President Trump asked that the bill gets to his desk before July 4th, but if the differences take longer to work out it may be a few additional weeks before the bill becomes law. Either way, the tax credit won’t take effect right away.
