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Democratic Senators Demand Investigation Into Destruction Of Student Loan Forgiveness Program
CFPB needs to open an investigation into mismanagement of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Thousands of public service workers need protection from ongoing harm.
At the Smart Dissent Education page linked here, we have written over and over and over about the heinous efforts of the worthless Betsy DeVos to destroy our education system. Instead of drastically needed help for our schools and students, DeVos repeatedly inflict more pain in new ways.
Twenty-three U.S. senators are calling on the nation's top consumer protection agency to investigate a loan servicer for its role in a troubled student loan forgiveness program. The program is designed to help public service workers like teachers and police officers.
The loan servicer, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, better known as FedLoan and PHEAA, is one of the entities that handles the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
"Public service workers and their families need immediate protection from ongoing harm," the senators wrote. "We therefore ask that the CFPB do its job and immediately open an enforcement investigation into PHEAA's servicing practices, management of the PSLF program, and other potential violations of federal consumer financial laws."
In July 2019 we posted that "One of the biggest U.S. teachers unions is suing the Department of Education, alleging a loan forgiveness program for millions of public service workers violates federal law and the Constitution."
The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program aims to help police, military service members, teachers, people who work at nonprofits and others. If they make qualifying payments for 10 years, the program promises to forgive the remainder of their student loan debt.
But the program is rejecting 99% of people who think they have done that when they apply to get their loans forgiven.
We wrote about the rejection and destruction of this incredibly valuable program previously here and here.
....the senators cited a 2017 report by the CFPB's student loan ombudsman. The report found that public service workers had been denied for loan forgiveness because of PHEAA's "flawed payment processing, botched paperwork and inaccurate information," the senators wrote.
And a 2018 Government Accountability Office report "found that public service workers had improperly been denied loan forgiveness because of PHEAA' s inability to properly account for qualifying payments and reliance on inaccurate information," the senators wrote.