Votes sought at taxpayers’ expense, say Foxx, Cassidy: Report

(The Center Square) – Only 40% of student loan borrowers make payments, and congressional committee leaders from North Carolina and Louisiana said Wednesday the federal report confirms the White House’s efforts to win votes at taxpayers’ expense.

U.S. Reps. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy, R-La., requested the Government Accountability Office analysis because they believed the Biden administration “has repeatedly failed to communicate to borrowers on how to transition to repayment,” a release says. Payments resumed in October 2023 after a 3½-year pause due to COVID-19.

The congressional leaders – Foxx as chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and Cassidy as ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions – say in addition to the January percentage making repayments, another 8 million borrowers in July alone have been placed into forbearance by the Biden administration.

“The majority of borrowers don’t believe they need to pay back the loans they knowingly took on, and who can blame them after years of false hope and illegal schemes from the Biden-Harris administration?” Foxx said. “It’s past time for this administration to quit lying to the American public and focus on real solutions to deal with the cost of postsecondary education, like the College Cost Reduction Act that will hold institutions financially responsible for overpriced degrees that leave students with unaffordable debt.”

Cassidy said President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ nominee as his successor this fall, are not being honest on multiple fronts.

“The Biden-Harris administration is misleading these borrowers to win their vote while setting them up for failure,” he said. “These borrowers are racking up interest with missed payments while waiting for the false promise of widespread debt ‘cancellation’ this administration has no authority to deliver. Let’s be clear, the Biden-Harris administration is not canceling debt. They are trying to take the debt from those who willingly took it on and transfer it onto the 87% of Americans who chose to not go to college or already paid off their education.”

The federal report said 30% of borrowers, accounting for about $290 billion in loans, were past due on payments. About $254 billion in loans is not expected repaid because of deferment or forbearance.

The report said 13.3 million borrowers, about 40%, were current. Those borrowers account for $706 billion in loans.

A release from Foxx’s committee says, “To further disincentivize borrowers from paying off their loans after student loan payments resumed last August, the Biden-Harris Department of Education announced that borrowers will not be penalized or considered delinquent if they miss payments for up to a year. This ‘coincidentally’ pushes any consequences for not making payments to after the November election. Borrowers who choose not to pay will still be charged interest on their unpaid loans and may be unaware that interest is accruing. This policy violates the Fiscal Responsibility Act and misleads borrowers on what their responsibilities are to repay their loans.”