Providing for Congressional Disapproval of Rule Submitted By Department of Education Relating to ``Borrower Defense Institutional Accountability''

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEVIN of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Lee for yielding and for her leadership on this critical issue.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this legislation, which reverses actions by Betsy DeVos that would deny debt relief to students defrauded by predatory colleges.

Over recent years, we have seen for-profit colleges like Corinthian and ITT Tech collapse, leaving students in my district and across the country with crushing debt and none of the job opportunities that they were promised.

These students were defrauded, plain and simple, and they have been left holding the bag, thanks to Betsy DeVos' refusal to implement an Obama-era rule that provides defrauded students with relief and helps them move forward with their lives.

Instead, DeVos rewrote the rule to make it harder for borrowers to get relief, severely restricted how much relief they can receive, and shifted the costs of providing debt relief from predatory schools to the taxpayers.

DeVos is putting the interests of predatory for-profit schools above students, and it is wrong. We should always put students first, and many of them are waiting on Betsy DeVos to do the right thing.

As of last month, 240,000 defrauded students, including more than 41,000 students in California, are still waiting for DeVos to take action on their claims for debt relief. Many of these students can't afford to enroll in another school without the debt relief they are owed. They can't move on with their lives because Betsy DeVos is dragging her feet. That is simply not fair.

We must pass this legislation to stop DeVos from making it even harder for defrauded students to get the relief they desperately need.

Ultimately, we must do much more to help stop schools from defrauding students and taxpayers in the first place.

Ms. FOXX of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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