Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

11. Department of Education · Major · Needs Congress

Consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program

Partially done

354 11. Department of Education

“Consolidate all federal loan programs into one new program that a) utilizes income-driven repayment, b) includes no interest rate subsidies or loan forgiveness, c) includes annual and aggregate limits on borrowing, and d) includes skin in the game to hold colleges accountable.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    The earnings-accountability half of the statute took regulatory form: the Department published final rules establishing the Student Tuition and Transparency System and the low-earnings eligibility test for institutions.

  2. Partially done

    The Department's final student loan regulations implemented the statute effective 2026-07-01: new loan limits, the Grad PLUS phase-out, the phase-out of income-contingent repayment, the new tiered standard plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan. Federal lending still runs through the Direct Loan program and the pre-existing plans for current borrowers; there is no single consolidated program.

  3. Partially done

    Public Law 119-21 delivered three of the four elements without creating the single program. It phased out the existing income-contingent repayment plans and left two options — a tiered standard plan and the income-driven Repayment Assistance Plan (a); set annual and aggregate borrowing limits for graduate, professional and parent borrowers and ended Grad PLUS (c); and made institutions ineligible when their programs' graduates earn too little, sec. 84001 (d, an accountability test rather than risk-sharing). Element (b) went the other way: the law preserved Public Service Loan Forgiveness and extended it to Repayment Assistance Plan payments (sec. 82004), and the new plan itself forgives balances.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Two attempts to overturn the implementing rule under the Congressional Review Act failed: the Senate rejected the motion to proceed on S.J. Res. 196 by 45-52 on 2026-06-24, and on S.J. Res. 182 (the PSLF rule) by voice vote on 2026-05-20.
  • The Mandate’s element (d), “skin in the game”, is usually read as institutional risk-sharing on defaulted loans. Public Law 119-21 instead conditions eligibility on graduates’ earnings; that is the reading taken here.
Action
create
Object
Federal student loan programs
ID
887