WASHINGTON – The House attempted on Friday and failed to override the strict rules imposed by the Trump administration on the forgiveness of student loans, without overriding President Trump’s veto.
The override effort, which would have revived bipartisan legislation to override the regulations established last year by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, failed in a vote of 238 to 173, without a two-thirds majority it would have had to pass. Six Republicans joined all Democrats in the vote to challenge Trump’s position.
“It was important to try,” said Rep. Susie Lee, a Nevada Democrat, who led the effort. “There are 350,000 students in this country waiting for help.
“They cannot go on with their lives,” he added. “This is a clearly stacked rule in favor of predatory schools and against students.”
The new rules, which make it much more difficult for students who say their schools have let them down to forgive their loans, will now go into effect July 1.
The president vetoed a bipartisan bill last month to reverse Ms. DeVos’s rules, which tightened the standards set under the Obama administration for student borrowers seeking to have their federal loans erased after claiming that their universities disappointed. Under the new regulations, even if borrowers could prove they were victims of unscrupulous universities, they could still be denied relief unless they could prove that their earnings were adversely affected.
Ms. DeVos’s movement was met with a backlash from veterans’ organizations who argued that it would harm former service members who had been looted by unscrupulous nonprofit universities. California spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi called the new rules “an act of staggering cruelty.”
Those sentiments echoed on the floor of the Chamber on Friday during the debate.
“The American people do not support Betsy DeVos,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington, who argued that the secretary sought to reward “predatory for-profit universities” at the expense of students. “The House of the People is on the side of the people, and not Betsy DeVos.”
Rep. Alma Adams, a Democrat from North Carolina, was especially concerned with the Trump administration’s arguments that the rule protects historically black colleges and universities.
“No HBCU has been implicated,” said Adams. “That is fake news.”
Republicans, however, argued that the new rules protected colleges from students who accumulated debts they simply did not want to pay.
“The Obama administration used this process to advance an ideological scheme for loan forgiveness,” argued Rep. Lloyd K. Smucker, R-Pennsylvania.
Rep. Steve Watkins Jr., a Republican from Kansas, called the Obama-era regulations “expensive” and said they led to “abuse.”
The issue is a little-known loan forgiveness rule, called “borrower defense for repayment,” which was the primary vehicle the Obama administration used to provide debt relief to tens of thousands of students affected by the collapse of two large for-profit university chains, Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech, in 2015 and 2016.
Ms. DeVos said the Obama administration did not examine the claims fairly for universities and taxpayers, and said it was monitoring a process that amounted to “free money.” She also said that the Obama administration has put together the rule to target for-profit schools.
Ms. DeVos’s changes raised the bar for borrower relief claims, requiring each applicant to individually prove that a school knowingly deceived them and that the deception financially harmed them. They also set a three-year deadline for claims.
The department said the new rules would save taxpayers about $ 11 billion over the next decade.
“That’s $ 11 billion that students who have been defrauded will now have to pay,” said Rep. Robert C. Scott, a Democrat from Virginia.
Outraged by the changes, various groups, led by Veterans Education Success, began running announcements on Fox News in hopes of persuading Trump to reconsider. They argued that the new rules did not protect military service members who had long been subjected to predatory tactics by universities because of their lucrative GI benefits.
Finally, Trump sided with DeVos by arguing that Obama-era regulations were too broad to define what amounted to educational fraud.
Despite the loss, Lee said he planned to revisit the topic soon.
“I am not going to give up the fight for this,” he said. “In fact, I spent much of the past few days calling my fellow Republicans, trying to find another way forward.”
Erica L. Green and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
