Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Help Me Tackle Student Debt
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) isn't just a thorn in the side of Wall Street banks. She's also happy to go head-to-head with the Obama administration when she feels the president's team is part of the problem.
Right now, the issue fueling a dispute between Warren and the White House is student loan debt. Last week, Warren sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan alleging that his department is not using many of the tools at its disposal to help Americans who are struggling to pay back student loans. In particular, the department has authority to help students duped by predatory for-profit colleges, and Warren says they're not using it.
Since her election to the Senate in 2012, Warren has devoted a lot of energy to tackling Americans' $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. The first bill she introduced upon her arrival in the Senate in 2013 proposed allowing students to obtain loans at the same low rate the Federal Reserve gives to banks. That bill went nowhere, so the following year Warren returned with a second proposal to allow Americans to refinance their student debt at current interest rate levels. Senate Republicans blocked it.
Now Warren is turning to the Department of Education, which, she argues, already has the power to address the problem. The department, which Congress has empowered to administer student loan programs, has broad authority to collect unpaid loans. But in many cases, it also have the authority to reduce or wipe away debts.
In her letter to Duncan, Warren charges that the federal government is projected to earn $110 billion in profits from student loans over the next decade due in part to the department's "failure to implement congressional directives or utilize its discretionary authority to protect our most vulnerable borrowers." Warren's letter was signed by other progressive Democratic senators, including Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, and Ed Markey, also of Massachusetts.
More here: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/03/warren-obama-student-debt-loans
