WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, joined a group of 129 lawmakers in a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urging the department to withdraw its latest attempt to transfer student loan debt onto American taxpayers.
The proposed rule will cost an additional $147 billion and bring the total student loan debt transferred to taxpayers to as much as $1 trillion. This effort was led by U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.-05).
“The latest Notice of Proposed Rule Making proposed by your Department of Education on April 17, 2024, represents the latest in a string of reckless attempts to transfer as much as $1 trillion of student loan debt from those who willingly borrowed to those who did not or have already repaid their loans,” the lawmakers wrote. “In addition to the fiscally irresponsible nature of this backdoor attempt to enact ‘free’ college, the administration continues to use borrowers as political pawns knowing full well these proposed actions are illegal. The Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that there is zero authority to write-off federal student loans en masse last June when the Department’s ‘Plan A’ was ruled unconstitutional,” the lawmakers wrote.