The three Democrats in charge of the House Financial Services Committee, the House Education and Labor Committee, and the House Oversight and Reform Committee threw down the student loan gauntlet yesterday, firing off letters to regulators and the largest student loan servicers, seeking a huge amount of information about their dealings with the Department of Education and whether the federal government is doing enough to help and protect individuals with student loans.
The letters were sent by Rep. Maxine Waters [D-Calif.], the chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings [D-Md.], the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, and Rep. Bobby Scott [D-Va.], the chairman of the Education and Labor Committee. The letters were sent to Kathy Kraninger, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education, Navient, Nelnet, and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Authority.
In the letter sent to DeVos, the Democrats accuse the Department of Education of failing to oversee student loan services, obstructing state law enforcement, and undermining the CFPB’s oversight of student loan servicers.
Along with seeking any correspondence that the companies or regulator have had with the Trump Administration related to student loans, the letter also requests compensation information for executives and collectors, call information from individuals, data on forbearance and payments, training materials, and complaint information.
The recipients of the letters were given two weeks to gather the information and send it to the Rep. Waters, Rep. Cummings, and Rep. Scott. In the letter, the Democrats come out swinging. This is how the letter to John Remondi, the Chief Executive of Navient, started:
Americans are facing a crisis of student loan debt. Forty-three million student borrowers in the United States have more than $1.4 trillion in outstanding federal loans. As Chairs of Committees with oversight responsibilities over the student loan industry, we are concerned by reports that the Trump Administration has paid more than $1.7 billion in taxpayer money to Navient and other companies servicing student loans while failing to provide adequate oversight and shielding these companies from state and federal law enforcement.
The letter to Kraninger accuses the CFPB of weakening “its ability to fulfill its mission to protect student loan borrowers,” providing “potentially harmful and conflicting advice,” and says there are concerns about the Education Department’s attempts to “impede” the CFPB’s oversight of student loan servicers.
