Massive Bill Boosts Defense, Cuts Climate Funds, and Imposes New Fees on Immigrants

This massive piece of legislation, dubbed the FEHB Protection Act of 2025, is less about protecting federal employee health benefits (FEHB is just one small part of Title IX) and more about a sweeping overhaul of federal spending, regulation, and tax policy across ten different areas. Think of it as the ultimate kitchen-sink bill. It extends farm subsidies, pours billions into the military, rolls back environmental funding, and fundamentally changes how student aid and immigration work.

The Farm and Food Safety Net: Extended but Changed

If you’re a farmer, this bill is extending the financial safety net. It keeps the major farm subsidy programs, Price Loss Coverage (PLC) and Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC), running through 2031 and bumps up payment rates for many commodities. This provides stability, but it’s a big commitment of federal dollars. On the food assistance side, the bill locks in the current calculation of the Thrifty Food Plan for SNAP benefits, which means annual cost-of-living adjustments will continue. However, a major change hits the states: starting in 2028, if a state’s SNAP error rate is 6% or higher, they have to start paying a share of the benefit costs. Plus, the federal share of administrative costs gets cut from 50% to 25% starting in 2027. For states like California or Texas, this is a massive potential cost shift, forcing them to either dramatically improve accuracy or find billions in new state funding to manage the program.

Billions for the Pentagon, Cuts for Consumer Watchdogs

Title II is a huge investment in national defense, appropriating over $7.3 billion just for improving the quality of life for military families—think better housing, childcare, and tuition assistance. This is a direct benefit to service members and could stimulate local economies near bases. It also allocates tens of billions for new ships, aircraft, and advanced weapons, which is a boon for the defense industrial base and related manufacturing jobs.

Meanwhile, Title III takes a sharp knife to financial regulators. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)—the agency that looks out for you when dealing with banks, credit cards, and mortgages—sees its annual funding cap nearly cut in half, from 12% to 6.5% of the Federal Reserve’s operating expenses. This directly limits the CFPB’s ability to investigate and enforce consumer protection rules. If you rely on the CFPB to crack down on predatory lending or unfair banking practices, this reduction is going to slow down their work. The bill also cancels the Green and Resilient Retrofit Program for Multifamily Housing, stopping grants intended to make apartment buildings more energy-efficient.

Tax Breaks, Student Loans, and Climate Rollbacks

Title VII is where tax policy hits home. It extends current income tax rates and the increased standard deduction, preventing a tax hike after 2025 for middle-income families. The Child Tax Credit also increases to $2,200 per child. For parents, there’s a new “Trump account”—a tax-advantaged savings account for minors—and new, temporary deductions for tips, overtime, and car loan interest. This is targeted relief for working families, though the deductions are temporary.

However, Title VII also restricts eligibility for Medicaid, Medicare, and Affordable Care Act premium tax credits mainly to U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents. This is a big deal: it means many lawfully present immigrants, who currently qualify for these subsidies, could lose their health coverage, potentially increasing the uninsured rate and shifting costs to emergency rooms.

In the environmental arena, Title VI and Title V are busy rolling back recent climate initiatives. The bill rescinds unspent funding from numerous programs aimed at reducing air pollution and promoting clean energy, effectively gutting the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. It also pushes back the deadline for a key methane emissions reduction program by a decade, from 2024 to 2034. If you live in an area affected by air pollution, this delay means waiting longer for cleaner air. Title IV also eliminates the civil penalties for automakers who fail to meet fuel economy (CAFE) standards, removing a key incentive for manufacturers to produce more efficient cars.

The Cost of Entry: New Immigration Fees

Title X establishes a series of new, mandatory fees for almost every step of the immigration process, including asylum applications, work permits, and parole entry. These fees are set to increase annually with inflation and cannot be waived, with very few exceptions. For an asylum seeker or someone applying for a work authorization, this creates a major financial barrier to legal status. The bill simultaneously pours over $40 billion into enforcement, detention, and border security, including a $10 billion grant fund for states to reinforce their own border activities (Title IX).

Finally, Title VIII tackles student aid. It creates a new Repayment Assistance Plan to simplify loan repayment and links federal aid eligibility to graduate outcomes. Starting in 2026, if a program’s graduates consistently have median earnings that are too low, the program loses access to federal student loan and grant money. For students, this means colleges will be under pressure to ensure their degrees lead to actual jobs, but for colleges, it means intense pressure to cut programs that don’t meet the earnings threshold, regardless of their academic value.