I spoke today at a Capitol Hill press event organized by the Debt Collective. Other speakers, who included senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Ed Markey (D-MA), Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Ashley Pizzuti and Valerie Scott, two of the student borrowers who organized the event, properly focused on the urgency of the Biden administration cancelling federal student loan debt for borrowers defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges. I took a detour and discussed what the incoming Trump administration should do about those colleges if it actually does care, which Trump claims to, about fighting waste, fraud, and abuse with federal tax dollars.
Here’s what I said:
Thank you to Rep. Waters, and senators Markey and Durbin, and thank you, Ashley, and all the borrowers who were ripped off by predatory colleges and now are fighting back, asking for justice and asking for your financial lives back. The Biden administration should act right now to grant broad debt relief to struggling borrowers, especially the victims of predatory schools.
I want to discuss what the incoming Trump administrations should do.
Trump says he will create a new department run by Elon Musk to go after waste fraud abuse.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Musk, here is some real waste fraud and abuse: low quality, high priced for profit colleges, sold through deception, that have received literally hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars and have left many students worse off than when they started – buried in debt and without the careers they sought.
The Biden administration, like the Obama administration, fought against this blatant waste, fraud, and abuse by creating performance standards for schools getting taxpayer dollars. That’s called the gainful employment rule.
They created the borrower defense rule that gives colleges skin in the game – if they scam students, students get relief, and the government can try to recoup the money.
President Biden also signed a bipartisan bill to reform the federal 90-10 law to prevent the extreme targeting by predatory schools of veterans and service members.
The first Trump administration, unfortunately, went in the opposite direction. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos staffed her department with former for-profit college executives and got rid of the gainful employment and borrower defense rules. She shut down her department’s enforcement team fighting against deceptive practices.
And when veterans groups pushed in 2020 for the 90-10 reform bill I mentioned, a Fox News host named Pete Hegseth took money from the for-profit college industry to make sure his friend Trump would oppose it.
Why are so many Republicans obedient to this corrupt industry that harms veterans, single moms, rural people, people of color, immigrants, the elderly, and others struggling to build better lives?
Is it really worth the few hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions this industry provides?
Whatever the reason, it’s time for this madness to stop. Or else another generation of victims will be right here in 10 years seeking relief from another mountain of debt.
I hope senators ask Trump’s new secretary of education nominee, Linda McMahon, to commit in concrete ways to standing up for America’s students — and not for a predatory industry that has for decades abused students and cheated taxpayers.
[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]
