Student Loans and FY2006 Budget Reconciliation

RS22308 -- Student Loans and FY2006 Budget Reconciliation

Updated February 14, 2006

Summary

The FY2006 budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 95, H.Rept. 109-62) contains reconciliation instructions that require authorizing committees to report legislation to reduce mandatory spending by $34.7 billion over a five-year period. Under these instructions, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is responsible for a reduction of $12.7 billion for FY2006 through FY2010. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is responsible for a reduction of $13.7 billion over that period. These committees were required to report reconciliation recommendations to their respective budget committees, and each did so in October, 2005. The Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization and budget reconciliation processes became intertwined during the first session of the 109th Congress. Each of the aforementioned authorizing committees marked up a comprehensive HEA reauthorization bill containing provisions that generate substantial net savings in mandatory spending on the student loan programs. Many of these savings provisions were included in committee reconciliation recommendations and in the reconciliation bills that gained passage in each chamber (H.R. 4241 and S. 1932). On December 19, 2005, the House passed the conference report (H.Rept. 109-362) on S. 1932, the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. On December 22, 2006, the Senate passed the conference report with relatively minor amendments. The conference agreement, as amended, was passed by the House on February 1, 2006. The President signed the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-171) into law on February 8, 2006.