Press Releases

WASHINGTON – Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) sent a letter today to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona lambasting the Biden-Harris administration for obstructing the Committee’s congressional oversight efforts regarding student loans. The letter follows the Committee’s subpoenas of five loan servicers.
 
The Biden-Harris administration’s Education Department is claiming it has the legal authority to review and approve any loan servicers’ materials before they can be submitted to the Committee. As Foxx’s letter lays out, there is no legal authority for the Department to interfere with the Committee’s lawfully issued congressional subpoenas.
 
In the letter, Chairwoman Foxx writes: “The Department has repeatedly sought to interfere with the Committee’s efforts to obtain documents and communications in a timely manner from the loan servicers. Not only has the Department interfered with the Committee’s ability to conduct oversight, but it has also failed to answer the Committee’s prior inquiry of August 14, 2024, seeking information about the timing of the Department’s regulation promoting additional student debt relief.”
 
The letter continues: “The Committee received a letter from Lisa Brown, the Department’s General Counsel, on September 5, 2024, contending that the loan servicers’ responses to the subpoenas ‘must receive prior approval from the Department’s contracting officer (or his or her designee).’ The letter cited a term in the loan servicers’ contracts with the Department as its legal authority to review and approve all responses prior to submission to Congress. However, a contract term does not override Article I of the U.S. Constitution, nor does a contract provide legal authority to interfere with or otherwise delay a third party’s mandatory response to a lawfully issued congressional subpoena. Under threats being leveled by the Department, the loan servicers did provide responsive documents to the Department for its review prior to the subpoena deadline of September 5, 2024, but none of these documents were ‘approved’ by the subpoena deadline. Now, fully 15 days later, still only a minimal number of documents or data have received ‘approval’ by the Department for the servicers’ submission to the Committee. This is unacceptable and contrary to General Counsel Brown’s commitment to ‘expedite responses to the subpoenas.’”

Background:

On July 31, 2024, the Biden-Harris administration issued a press release announcing that it would “begin emailing all borrowers with at least one outstanding federally held student loan” to alert them of their eligibility for student debt relief under a rule that is, by the Department’s own admission, “not yet finalized.” Borrowers were told they had until August 30 to “opt out” of this mystery relief. In response, Foxx wrote: “To my knowledge, no administration—Democrat or Republican—has ever taken such an aberrant approach to the administration of federal student aid as auto-enrolling the public in a government program that does not yet exist.”
 
On August 14, 2024, given the Department’s lack of fidelity to the law, Chair Foxx sent Secretary Cardona a letter asking: “Will the Department guarantee that any rule concerning student loan repayment or debt relief published in the Federal Register between now and the expiration of the president’s current term of office will not take effect before the statutory 30-day period has elapsed?”
 
On August 29, 2024, the Committee issued subpoenas to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), Nelnet Servicing, LLC, Maximus dba Aidvantage, Edfinancial Services and Central Research, Inc. to receive documents and communications related to the Department’s plans to finalize the student debt relief rule.

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