WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) today released the following statement after voting to pass President Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill.
“President Trump and I want to preserve the American Dream for working and middle America,” said Dr. Cassidy. “We keep taxes low, cut taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, extend the Child Tax Credit, fix our broken education system, support our military, secure our border, and build a business environment that creates better paying jobs – especially in Louisiana.”
As chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Cassidy led the Committee’s portion of the One Big Beautiful Bill, which fixes America’s broken higher education system and addresses the root causes of the student debt crisis.
Cassidy pushed to secure provisions in this historic legislation that:
- Make higher education more affordable by eliminating inflationary loan programs that have resulted in higher tuition costs.
- Prevent taxpayer-subsidized loans for degrees that leave students worse off than if they never went to college.
- Reform the current federal student loan program that transfers debt onto the 87 percent of Americans who chose to not go to college or already paid off their loans.
- Ensure low-income Americans can access higher education by strengthening Pell Grants and addressing the program’s budget shortfall. As it currently stands, the Pell Grant program faces a mounting budget shortfall that threatens its future.
- Expand education freedom and opportunity for students by providing a charitable donation incentive for individuals and businesses to fund scholarship awards for students to cover expenses related to K-12 public and private education.
- Increase access to career or technical-based education for low-income students by establishing Workforce Pell Grants. This is crucial to achieving President Trump’s goal of bringing skilled jobs back to America from China and Mexico.
- Boost U.S. manufacturing and crack down on China and other countries abusing our trade loopholes (de minimis). In 2023, Cassidy introduced similar legislation.
- Provide beauty industry small businesses with access to the tip credit, which would create jobs.
- Eliminate the $200 tax stamp for short-barreled firearms.
- Raise the annual cap on offshore energy revenue sharing with Gulf states from $500 million to $650 million through 2034.
- Require the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to hold no fewer than two lease sales every year for fifteen years in the Central and Western areas of the Gulf of America—something the Biden administration refused to do.
- Invest $389 million in America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to bolster U.S. energy security.
- Unleash American energy by allowing energy companies to deduct costs, including labor and safety, associated with oil and gas exploration.
- Expand access to direct primary care arrangements, by allowing the use of Health Savings Account (HSA) dollars to pay for such services.
Click here for the HELP section-by-section.
Click here for the HELP one-pager.
###