Fafsa Deadline Act
Floor Speech
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Mrs. HOUCHIN. Mr. Speaker, as the mother of two college students, I am all too familiar with the concerns voiced by the nearly 18 million students and their families who attempted to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid this year and who are dreading a failed rollout again this year.
I am here today to speak on their behalf.
I am especially frustrated considering the Department of Education has had 3 years to simplify the FAFSA as Congress has dictated.
This clear misplacement of priorities led the 2024 FAFSA to be delayed by 3 months with continuous technical issues. A scathing report from the Government Accountability Office found not only did the Biden- Harris Department of Education repeatedly fail to release FAFSA, when they finally released it, it didn't work. Then they left millions of calls from American families unanswered. Three-quarters of calls to the Department of Education about the broken FAFSA were not answered, and when they did answer the phone, they told parents to just keep trying.
It is as if we need to take the Department of Education, unplug it, plug it back in, and hope that it might work, but it is not going to. They are still unprepared.
The Department of Education has already failed students again this year with the expectation that the form will now again be 2 months late.
My bill, the FAFSA Deadline Act, sets a firm October 1 deadline to publish FAFSA consistent with what has been expected for years.
Thankfully, this wasn't an issue under President Trump. We can look forward to prioritizing FAFSA once again in this next administration.
It is imperative that we do not allow this to become precedent and that we work together to make sure that American families are taken care of when applying for the FAFSA.
We want this program to work. We want to make sure that families that want to send their kids to college have the availability to do that and that the FAFSA is available and workable.
For parents and students across the country, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
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