Americans for Financial Reform welcomes the Department of Education’s announcement that they will extend the closed school discharge window for students who attended ITT Tech back to 2008.
AFREF joined a letter urging the Department of Education to include several topics that would protect borrowers in the upcoming negotiated rulemaking.
AFR joined a letter calling on President Biden to extend the pause on student loan payments until the
Administration has delivered on its promises made to student loan borrowers to fix the broken
student loan system and cancel federal student debt.
Americans for Financial Reform warmly welcomes the news that Richard Cordray has been appointed to be the COO of Federal Student Aid (FSA) at the Department of Education. Cordray served as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) inaugural director for six years, and the Bureau quickly became a powerful force for good.
Today, over 415 organizations sent an updated letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, calling on them to use executive authority to cancel federal student debt immediately. In the letter, the 416 advocacy groups highlight that cancelling student debt would stimulate the economy, help reduce racial wealth gaps, and could have a positive impact on health outcomes.
400 organizations signed a letter to President Biden and Vice President Harris, calling on them to use executive authority to cancel federal student debt immediately. The letter, first sent in November and then again in January, has been updated with more than 70 additional signers.
While it’s encouraging to see the Department act to protect over one million defaulted borrowers from seized tax refunds and wage garnishment, they must not leave behind the 5.5 million commercial FFEL borrowers who aren’t in default. An estimated 9 million borrowers total have been left out of the federal student loan suspension through no fault of their own. There is bipartisan support for ensuring no federal student loan borrowers areunfairly left behind; the Department must use its authority to protect all federal student loan borrowers.
The Department of Education’s actions today halt harms to borrowers that should never have happened. The Department must act next to affirmatively improve borrowers’ realities. The Trump administration, through executive action, made Total and Permanent Disability discharges automatically available to eligible veterans unless they opted-out. The Biden Administration must similarly act to make TPD discharges automatic for the estimated 400,000 borrowers eligible for relief who have not yet received it.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MARCH 18, 2021 Contact: Alexis Goldstein, alexis@ourfinancialsecurity.org Statement of Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst, Americans for Financial Reform: It is good to see the Department of Education finally take significant steps to fulfill the promise then-Secretary Arne Duncan made in 2015, that
Statement of Alexis Goldstein, AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst, in response to President Biden’s comments on student debt cancellation at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Town Hall: President Biden’s Racial Economic Equity campaign plan called for an “immediate cancellation of a minimum of $10,000 in federal student loan