| Dear Friends, Earlier today, the United States Senate voted to include a permanent and unlimited scholarship tax credit in the budget reconciliation bill. The groundbreaking school choice proposal survived two attempts to eliminate it and was forced to be revised, but the bottom line for you, it's still in! If passed, we expect this credit to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in K-12 scholarships for our communities alone! What happened? On Friday morning, we woke up to the news that the Senate removed the school choice provisions from the Big, Beautiful Bill. Not because the Republican Senate majority wanted to, but because the parliamentarian, a Senate staffer, ruled that it would be deemed "out of order" and not eligible to be included. Reconciliation budget bills have unique rules about what is and what isn't allowed to be included. The minority party traditionally challenges many of the provisions of a reconciliation bill and the parliamentarian is tasked with ruling on those challenges. The majority party then either listens to her, tries to convince her to change her mind, or rewrites the affected section. Overruling the parliamentarian is extremely rare. In this case, thanks to a joint effort of Agudah, its coalition partners, and most importantly, Senator Ted Cruz and other Senate champions, a solution was found. Senator Cruz refused to back down and ultimately rewrote sections of the bill to satisfy her concerns. What's in the bill? The bill provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to donors who contribute to a nonprofit scholarship granting organization (SGO). The SGOs then take the pooled funds and distribute scholarships to eligible students for qualified educational expenses. The beneficiaries can include most families as the income threshold is above $300,000 in many areas (see chart). The revised version allows every taxpayer to receive a credit of up to $1700 and removed the annual cap on donations among other changes. This means that if every person and every community comes together to contribute towards the chinuch of the next generation, we can raise hundreds of millions of dollars in tuition scholarship funds each year at no cost to the donors. Agudah will host a webinar on tonight at 8:30 pm EDT to explain the current bill in more detail, what changed, and next steps. Register here. What's next? The bill now moves back to the House for a vote before it can be sent to the President for his signature. The tax credit would take effect January 2027. Thank you for your advocacy and support. Sincerely, AD Motzen National Director of Government Affairs Agudath Israel of America | 
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