Bloomberg News reported that a group of Senate Democrats, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, urged the government to offer relief to distressed borrowers, even if that dampens the profit it makes from collecting on people with outstanding loans.
In a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan,the six senators wrote, “It is not the job of the Department of Education to maximize profits for the government at the cost of squeezing students.”
The letter noted that a recent Congressional Budget Office estimate indicates that the federal government will recover over $100 billion from these loans in
the next decade.
BIG ED should make it easier for people to use the few tools available for demanding a refund on their student debt, the senators wrote. Borrowers who believe that their college committed fraud or lied to them — about job prospects or graduation rates, for example — can file what’s known as a “defense to repayment” claim against the school, according to federal law. But Warren and other senators have railed against the Department for not making it clear enough to students how they could make such a claim.