News: House set to vote on repealing Biden’s student debt relief

Monday, May 22, 2023

House set to vote on repealing Biden’s student debt relief

May 22, 2023

HOUSE SETS VOTE ON REPEALING BIDEN’S STUDENT DEBT RELIEF: House leaders are preparing to vote this week on legislation that would block President Joe Biden’s student debt relief program and nullify the pause on federal student loan payments and interest.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy speaks with reporters.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol after he and other Congressional leaders met with President Biden at the White House to discuss the debt ceiling May 9, 2023. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

— Nearly all House Republicans already voted last month to block Biden’s student debt relief as part of a sweeping package of policy proposals in the GOP bill to raise the debt ceiling.

— But this would be the first time that Biden’s loan forgiveness program gets a vote in the House as a stand-alone measure. It’ll gauge the strength of Democratic support for the policy in Congress, especially among some moderates who have been cool to the idea of canceling student debt even as it’s been championed by the party’s progressive wing.

—The timing: Later today, the House Rules Committee will meet to prepare the legislation for a floor vote, which is expected on Wednesday afternoon, according to House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s office. House Republicans approved the measure in committee earlier this month on a party-line vote.

—GOP lawmakers are using the Congressional Review Act to repeal Biden’s debt relief policies. The tool allows Congress to swiftly block recent executive branch policies using fast-track procedures.

—Republicans will be able to force a vote on the resolution in the Senate, though it’s not yet clear whether they have the votes to pass it in that chamber. The timing of a possible Senate vote is also up in the air. The chamber is out of session this week, though it could return to vote on any debt ceiling deal.

— All Senate Republicans except Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) have signed on to the bill. Some moderate Democrats have been noncommittal over whether they would vote to defend Biden’s student debt relief plan even though they’ve criticized the policy in the past.

—The Congressional Budget Office last week estimated that the repeal of Biden’s debt relief plan would reduce the deficit by about $320 billion over the next decade, as a result of “future repayments of principal and interest on student loans." GOP lawmakers say the plan is unfair and too expensive for taxpayers.

—The Biden administration, meanwhile, has sharply criticized the GOP effort to block debt relief that millions of Americans are seeking. The Education Department argued, unsuccessfully, to the Government Accountability Office that the policy shouldn’t be subject to congressional review in the first place. It seems likely that Biden would defend his signature student debt program with a presidential veto, but the White House has not said directly whether he would do so.

ALSO ON THE HILL THIS WEEK: The House Education Committee’s higher education panel on Wednesday will hold a second oversight hearing to discuss the “implications of Biden’s student loan policies for students and taxpayers.” Witnesses have not yet been announced.

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Education Department

CARDONA TODAY: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona heads to Puerto Rico today to jointly announce with Gov. Pedro Pierluisi “systemic changes to the Puerto Rico Department of Education that will better ensure that students and families are benefitting from a school system that responds directly to their needs,” according to the U.S. Education Department.

— Cardona and Pierluisi will be joined by Puerto Rico’s education secretary, Eliezer Ramos Parés, for the press conference at a school this afternoon.

BIDEN ADMIN REACHES CIVIL RIGHTS RESOLUTION OVER SCHOOL BOOK REMOVAL: The Biden administration said on Friday that a Georgia school district’s removal of books from school libraries might have created a hostile environment for students based on sex or race under federal civil rights laws.

—The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said it had reached an agreement with Forsyth County Schools to resolve an investigation into its handling of a book ban controversy that has roiled the district, as it has many other school boards across the country.

—In response to complaints from parents, school officials removed from school libraries some books that were deemed to have inappropriate sexual content and created a committee to review the materials, according to the Education Department. The committee examined whether books had sexually explicit content and ultimately reinstated most of the books that were initially removed.

—That policy in itself wasn’t a problem under civil rights laws Title IX and Title VI, which prohibit sex-based and race-based discrimination, according to the department. “School and other libraries routinely operate policies to determine which books to offer their members,” the department noted in a statement.

—But OCR investigators found that “communications at board meetings conveyed the impression that books were being screened to exclude diverse authors and characters, including people who are LGBTQI+ and authors who are not white, leading to increased fears and possibly harassment.” One parent group, for example, had asked that the district keep LGBTQI+ books on separate shelves.

—The “book screening process may have created a hostile environment for students” and school officials didn’t take proper steps to “ameliorate any resultant racially and sexually hostile environment,” OCR officials wrote in a letter to the district.

—The school district agreed to resolve the investigation by sending a notice to students explaining the book removal process and “offering supportive measures to students who may have been impacted by that process,” the department said. The district also agreed to survey its students about the prevalence of sex-based or race-based harassment and how students believe it’s being handled by school leaders.

—Other investigations pending: The Biden administration has said publicly that it is separately investigating a Texas school district over allegations of the removal of books with LGBTQ characters in response to a complaint brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

THE STATES

WES MOORE SLAMS BOOK BANS: Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, the nation’s only Black governor, pushed back Sunday against political figures and Republican-led legislatures that have crusaded for banning books and for what has been derided as “divisive concepts” from being taught in school, POLITICO’s Brakkton Booker reports.

— “I look around the country and I see book banning. I’m looking around the country right now and I’m seeing … teachers being censored. I see [the] curriculum of truth being taken out,” Moore said during a commencement speech at Morehouse College, a historically Black and all-male college in Atlanta.

— Moore’s remarks on the nation’s culture wars were the first he has made on the issue since being sworn into office this year. “When politicians ban books and muzzle educators,” he said, “they say it’s an effort to prevent discomfort guilt — but we know that’s not true. This is not about a fear of making people feel bad. It is about a fear of people understanding their power.”

Higher Education

NEW U.S.-JAPAN PUSH ON UNIVERSITY TECH RESEARCH: Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the weekend signed an education cooperation agreement with Japan, highlighting new corporate pledges to boost advanced technology research at universities in both nations.

—The agreement, announced amid the G-7 summit in Hiroshima, calls for an “annual high-level education dialogue” between the U.S. and Japan to discuss easy to create opportunities for “students, faculty, and researchers to create safe and reliable technology.”

—New partnerships: IBM plans to give $100 million for quantum computing research at the University of Tokyo and the University of Chicago, and Google pledged $50 million to the two universities. Micron announced a new $60 million semiconductor engineering partnership among 11 other universities in the U.S. and Japan.

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Syllabus

— "After the pause: This is how borrowers are preparing for resumption of student-debt payments": MarketWatch.

— "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson tells law students ‘Survivor’ offers helpful lessons": The Associated Press.

— "Graduating seniors talk about a high school experience clouded by the pandemic": NPR.

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