Skip to content
News and updates

Category: Student Aid

Higher Ed Legislation Advances

Posted on

Today Senate HELP Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) will introduce his plan to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. The Higher Education Affordability Act focuses on four goals: Increasing college affordability, helping struggling borrowers, strengthening accountability, and improving transparency. These goals will be achieved through 21 action points, including tightening for-profit regulations, better accountability metrics for colleges and universities, and a reduction in loan borrower fees.

The Harkin proposal overlaps ever so slightly with goals outlined yesterday by Congressman John Kline (R-MN) and House Education & the Workforce Committee Republicans. Kline plans to introduce the first of a series of HEA-related bills, which will revolve around transparency, accountability, a simplified aid system, and limited federal regulation. We expect to see this bill later in the week.

Also today, the Senate will take up the Workforce Investment and Opportunity Act (WIOA), which would modernize the workforce education system in the U.S. Democratic Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and GOP Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA) both spent years negotiating the long overdue reauthorization. Lawmakers will consider the bill under a unanimous consent agreement. This is the first significant step in years toward reauthorization.

And finally, House Ways and Means Committee will mark up today a pair of bills addressing the child tax credit and education tax credits.The education tax bill would streamline a laundry list of credits and expand and make permanent the existing American Opportunity Tax Credit. The Child Tax Credit bill, introduced Monday by Congresswomen Lynn Jenkins (R-KS), would expand the number of individuals and families who can access the credit by increasing the income threshold from $110,000 to $150,000 for joint filers.

Student Loan Bill Fails in Senate

Posted on

The Senate failed to invoke cloture this morning and will not move forward on Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) bill to refinance student debt. The Senate voted of 56-38, which is less than the 2/3rds required to move forward.

Cloture Filed on Student Loan Bill

Posted on

Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)  filed a cloture motion on proceeding to the student loan bill (S 2432) that would allow borrowers to refinance their old student loans at the current lower interest rates.

The cloture vote would occur on Wednesday.

Cloture, under the Senate rules, ends debate on the bill and allows for final passage. To evoke cloture and proceed, two thirds of Senators must for cloture and agree to end debate.

This would be the first political test for the measure.

Senate VA Reform Agreement Includes In-State Tuition Provisions

Posted on

Late last week, Senators Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and John McCain (R-AZ) announced a deal to salvage sought-after Veterans Administration reform in the wake of the on-going VA scandal. The legislation would allow for the reform the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand veterans’ access to health care and make it easier to fire VA officials for misconduct.

Also included, the measure would provide some educational benefits to veterans by providing in-state tuition for all veterans at public colleges and universities, GI Bill tuition benefits to the spouses of troops killed in the line of duty and increased access to health care for sexual assault victims.

The provision mirrors a measure, HR 357 – the GI Bill Tuition Fairness Act, which passed the House earlier this year with a vote of 390-0.  

The Senate may consider the bill later in the week.

Obama Aims to Ease Student Debt

Posted on

President Obama announced today a new executive order aimed at easing student borrowers’ debt loads by capping repayments at 10 percent of their monthly income. Obama also made student loans the focus of his weekly address on Saturday, saying he’d be taking action this week.

The executive order will expand on a 2010 law, the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act, that capped borrowers’ repayment. The law left a hole in eligibility for people with older loans — anyone who borrowed before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011, which is approximately 5 million borrowers — were not eligible for the cap. The executive order will close the hole, but relief, however, would not be available until December 2015. The time is needed for the Department of  Education (ED) to propose and put new regulations into effect.

In addition, the President will announce that ED will renegotiate contracts with companies that service federal loans to give them additional financial incentives to help borrowers avoid delinquency or default.  Further, both ED and Treasury will work with the nation’s largest tax-preparation firms, H&R Block and Intuit Inc., to ensure that borrowers are aware of repayment options and tax credits for college tuition.

Finally, the President is expected to urge the swift passage of S 2292, the Bank on Students Emergency Loan Refinancing Act. The measure introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last week and has been championed by people like Senators Murray and Cantwell. The measure would would allow an estimated 25 million Americans to refinance student loans, federal and private, at lower interest rates. Reduced interest payments would cost the government about $58 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, but the legislation would raise $72 billion by imposing a new tax on some high-income individuals.

Fact Sheet on the Legislation Available here.

Bill Text Available here.

The Senate is expected to consider Warren’s bill (as S 2432) this week, but the measure has little chance of consideration by the House.