Cassidy said that Biden’s approach to student debt was “incredibly irresponsible.” He said the more than $400 billion relief plan, which offers up to $20,000 of loan forgiveness per borrower, was unfair to Americans who never attended college or already paid off their loans. The Louisiana Republican sat down with POLITICO last week to talk about student loans and his other priorities as ranking member of the HELP committee this Congress: —Cassidy suggested that Biden’s student debt relief policies should be part of discussions surrounding lifting the debt ceiling. But he didn’t go as far as the House Freedom Caucus, which earlier this month said that rescinding debt relief should be one several conditions for raising the debt ceiling. “Biden is accelerating the exhaustion of our borrowing capacity by pausing student loans,” Cassidy said. “I think it's $5 billion a month. He wants to add $420 billion with the debt forgiveness. It’s a total mess. He doesn't want any preconditions on raising the debt ceiling, and he's driving the exhaustion of our ability to borrow.” —On higher education, Cassidy said that passing the College Transparency Act is a top priority. The bipartisan bill, which has been introduced for the past several years, would allow the Education Department to track student outcomes, such as completion rates and earnings, across higher education. “Universities present financial aid information in a way — which is frankly deceiving — and kids end up with massive amounts of debt with no kind of reasonable expectation of return on investment relative to the amount of money that they have borrowed,” he said. “The institution ends up, of course, with the cash that comes from the child going deeply in debt with no consequence to the school. We need to empower those students and those families to enable them to make better decisions.” —Cassidy’s GOP counterpart in the House, Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the education committee, has long been opposed to the bill over concerns about privacy. The bill would overturn a 2008 ban on federal data collection that Foxx wrote. Cassidy had conversations with Foxx about finding a path forward on the College Transparency Act last year, he said, but those talks haven’t yet resumed this year. “Everything you do is kind of a negotiation, and you hope to get something into a shape that they can accept it — or at least accept it as part of a bigger package,” he said. “So it’s just one of those things that we will work at.” —On K-12 education, Cassidy said that he’ll continue to push on school choice issues. He earlier this year introduced legislation — the Educational Choice for Children Act — that would create a federal tax credit to support scholarships for school choice, an idea that former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed during the Trump administration. “The money should follow the student,” he said. “We saw after the pandemic that the parochial schools were the ones that stepped up and provided education, but the folks who want the legislature and the bureaucrats to control what a child is taught don't like that. They don't like the idea that parochial schools may teach something different. Frankly, the parents prefer it. That's why the parents send their child there.” —Cassidy also said he’s pushing for more dyslexia screening in schools, a longtime personal priority. His wife, Laura Cassidy, is a co-founder and board chair of the Louisiana Key Academy school network for students with dyslexia. “Twenty percent of the population is dyslexic, which means they learn to read differently. And if you teach them in a way which is appropriate for dyslexia, they learn to read. But if not, they may end up functionally illiterate,” Cassidy said. “Right now, most states have no screening for children's dyslexia period. So it's affecting 20 percent of the population, we got NAEP scores stuck in neutral, not budging. And if you've got $20,000 a year to pay tuition, you send your child to that private school to get them accommodated. But if you're more of modest means, then you never do.” IT’S MONDAY, MARCH 20. WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. Please send tips and feedback to the POLITICO education team: Michael Stratford (mstratford@politico.com), Mackenzie Wilkes (mwilkes@politico.com), Juan Perez Jr. (jperez@politico.com) and Bianca Quilantan (bquilantan@politico.com). Follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.
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