Press Releases

Yesterday, Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) sent a letter to U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona blasting the Department for its attempted cover-up of the real cost of President Biden’s illegal student loan bailout. In the letter, the lawmakers request documents from the Department on the development of its final cost estimates, noting that the process “fell woefully short of common auditing standards.”
 
In the letter, the Members write: “We write to express our grave concerns about the failure of the Department of Education (‘Department’) to provide sufficient evidence for its independent auditor, KPMG LLP (‘KPMG’), to form an audit opinion on the Department’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 consolidated financial statements. This is yet another example of this administration’s lack of transparency when it comes to wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars. The American people deserve better.” 
 
The Members continue: “Your Department’s ‘evidence’ underlying the cost estimates for its massive student loan debt relief plan fell woefully short of common auditing standards. … As KPMG’s Disclaimer of Opinion notes, the Department’s internal controls ‘were not properly designed ... to address the relevance and reliability of the ... data used to develop the [loan] take-up rate assumption used in the various loan program estimates.’ … The loopholes in the Department’s responses, as well as their vagueness, raise substantial questions about the Department’s intentions.”
 
The Members conclude: “Given your Department’s track record of hiding the costs of the Direct Loan and Federal Family Education Loan programs, we are greatly concerned about the lack of a sufficient evidentiary basis for the cost estimates of the President’s illegal debt relief plan.”
 
Read the full letter here.

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