PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION RELATING TO ``BORROWER DEFENSE INSTITUTIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY''--MOTION TO PROCEED

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in just a few moments, we are going to be considering the motion to proceed to the borrower CRA, and I would like to say a few words, understanding that the Senators are expecting this motion to come up in about 5 minutes.

This is a joint resolution that was passed on a bipartisan basis in the House of Representatives to overturn the borrower defense rule that has been promulgated by Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. I am pleased to be the Senate's sponsor.

Here is what it comes down to--hundreds of thousands of Federal student loan borrowers having been defrauded by their schools. They went to some of these for-profit schools that have gone out of business, but many schools defrauded these students over the years.

We in Congress established what was known as the borrower defense. We said, if you borrow money from the Federal Government and go to colleges that we acknowledge as being accredited and they defraud you, lie to you, misrepresent to you what your education is going to cost or what it is going to give you, then, you don't have to be saddled with the student debt for the rest of your life because of their lies, because of their fraud. You have a chance to go to the Department of Education and plead your case that you were defrauded, and you should at least be relieved of some, if not all, of your student loan debt. That is what it is all about.

There are 230,000 student borrowers who are waiting for the Department of Education, under Betsy DeVos, to do something. The Department has not done anything except to come up with a new rule that says, at this point, it is going to be harder for these students to prove fraud. It isn't enough that the States and other units of government have found fraud by these schools. These students are supposed to be their own lawyers and their own investigators and prove the fraud and how it affected them personally.

Is it reasonable for a young student who has been defrauded and is carrying student debt to have that responsibility? Secretary DeVos thinks yes. I think no. That is what this vote is all about.

Who agrees with my position on this issue? Most of the advocates for students do. In addition, the veterans organizations across America, led by the American Legion, are supporting our effort now under this Congressional Review Act to do away with the new rule by the Secretary of the Department of Education. They say it is unfair to veterans--it is--and unfair to student borrowers to hold them to this standard.

The American Legion's national commander, Bill Oxford, called the rule, which we are going to get a chance to vote on after the debate, ``fundamentally rigged against defrauded borrowers.'' He is speaking on behalf of veterans. He could be speaking on behalf of young men and women across America who have been misled by these schools over and over again. The Bipartisan Policy Center Action, the NAACP, Third Way, 20 State attorneys general, and a host of others have joined me in urging the Senate to overturn this unfair rule.

The Senate has a chance today to show the country that we can come together and do the right thing for students and veterans. How many times have we given speeches about how much we care about veterans? Here is a chance to vote with the veterans, especially those who have been defrauded out of their GI bill of rights and have ended up with additional debt.

Secondly, how many times have people told us these student debts are too much, are ruining kids' lives, and to give them a chance? I am not for forgiving all loans to all students, but these students have been defrauded. They should have an opportunity to start life again and not be burdened with the debt that is going to make life impossible in their futures.

I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join me. Regardless of what you think of the 2016 rule, we can certainly do better than what Secretary DeVos has come up with.

I have been advised that we are not quite ready for my request of the Chair. So I will say a couple of more words on the subject. I moved it along quickly, but I didn't have to.

Under the new Betsy DeVos rule, it turns out that, of the 100 percent of students who have been defrauded and are asking for relief, the estimate is that 3 percent will be successful but that 97 percent of these students will not have the opportunity to get this relief.

One of my colleagues whom I respect very much came to the floor here and said: If your car is a lemon, you don't sue the bank; you sue the dealer. A college can be a lemon just like a car can be. In his scenario, the school is the dealer, and the Department of Education is the bank. The case that he is making for a student who has been defrauded by a school is that one has been sold a lemon of an education and that we should go after the offending school.

Doesn't that sound right--that, if a school has defrauded you, you would go after it?

It turns out that the rule that Secretary DeVos has promulgated ties the hands of a student who is going after the school. It requires forced, mandatory arbitration. So you can't take it to court. It eliminates class actions so that students from the same school, like the Corinthian Colleges, which went bankrupt, can't even come together as a class. No, you have to lawyer up individually. You have to get ready to fight in some room that has been set aside in which the for- profit school and the Department of Education are going to argue against you.

Is that what we want to say to these students who have been through bad college experiences and want to get on with their lives, who found out that these credit hours from these for-profit colleges didn't transfer anywhere, and who found out the courses that were supposed to lead to jobs didn't lead to jobs?

These students were misled by these schools, and these schools are notorious for it. The question is this: Are we going to stand up for the students, many of whom are veterans, or are we going to stand up for the schools that have been affected by this?

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I understand there is a discharge petition at the desk for S.J. Res. 56 that has been signed by at least 30 Senators, which will cause the joint resolution to be discharged under the Congressional Review Act; is that correct?

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Mr. DURBIN. 439, S.J. Res. 56, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to ``Borrower Defense Institutional Accountability''.
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Mr. DURBIN. Warren) are necessarily absent.

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