11. Department of Education · Notable · Needs Congress
Eliminate Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loans
Printed page 354 11. Department of Education
“Eliminate Grad PLUS loans (for graduate students) and Parent PLUS loans (for parents of undergraduates).”
What has happened
- Partially done
Section 81001 of Public Law 119-21 terminated the Grad PLUS program outright — new HEA §455(a)(3)(C) provides that "for any period of instruction beginning on or after July 1, 2026, a graduate or professional student shall not be eligible to receive a Federal Direct PLUS Loan". Parent PLUS was not eliminated: the same section caps it at $20,000 a year and $65,000 in aggregate per dependent student from July 1, 2026. One of the Quote's two named programs is gone and the other is capped, which is delivery of one object of a two-object ask (playbook §3b).
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Read from the enrolled text on govinfo.gov, sec. 81001, which amends HEA §455(a) to add paragraph (3)(C) (Grad PLUS termination), paragraph (5) (parent annual $20,000 / aggregate $65,000 limits) and paragraph (6) (a $257,500 lifetime student cap).
- Overlaps #885 (privatize federal student lending) and #887 (consolidate loan programs), which carry the same statute; leveled here only on the two PLUS programs the Quote names.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- Grad PLUS and Parent PLUS loan programs
- ID
- 888