House report details Biden administration's 'failure to follow the rule of law' on student loan forgiveness

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx has released a report calling out another of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness initiatives as a “failure to follow the rule of law.”

On Thursday, the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce released a full 11-page report on the administration’s alleged abuses.

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”Throughout the Biden-Harris administration’s term, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) has repeatedly failed to follow the rule of law,” the document states. ”Its illegal activities involving federal student loan programs are unprecedented both in scope and impact on hardworking taxpayers.”

The report points to multiple violations by the administration but focuses primarily on its “manipulation of borrower defense,” which is defined as ”a process to provide student loan debt relief for borrowers who attended schools found to have engaged in fraudulent misrepresentation, such as false advertisements of job placement rates.”

Acknowledging the documentation of a whistleblower in the Education Department, the committee’s report details how the ”Department distorted the borrower defense to repayment provision, and certain accompanying regulations, to provide illegal en masse debt ‘forgiveness,’” and how the administration ”weaponized the provision against the proprietary school sector.”

”The Biden-Harris administration’s Department has repeatedly failed to adhere to the rule of law in its implementation of the [Higher Education Act’s] borrower defense to repayment provision ... and its use of the Secretary’s settlement and compromise authority,” the committee concludes in the report. ”Both are very straightforward statutes, but the Department has illegally co-opted and distorted each, far beyond the plain meaning of the text or historical interpretation.”

”Indeed, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Career Colleges and Universities of Texas v. U.S. Dept. of Educ. found the Department’s borrower defense implementation actions wanting on multiple grounds,” it adds. “What is the solution? Very simple. Follow the rule of law and start afresh with a new borrower defense rulemaking.”

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In a press release published the same day as the report, Foxx stated that, “There’s no surprise here: the Biden-Harris administration has refused to admit that its student loan schemes are illegal, and instead has tried to stretch every possible law to deliver on its outrageous campaign promise.”

“Thankfully, the courts have seen through these shams, and in eighteen days, the jig will finally be up,” she noted.