House Republicans introduced a slate of bills to help dismantle the Department of Education — including one that would allow for the transfer of millions of student-loan accounts to the Treasury Department.
On Thursday, the House education committee unveiled 10 bills to codify the Trump administration’s plans to “right-size” the Education Department, which would involve partnerships with other federal agencies to assume the department’s responsibilities.
“Rather than allowing unnecessary layers of Washington bureaucracy stand between families and the services they rely on, the bills would transfer key statutory authorities to agencies better equipped to carry them out,” Rep. Tim Walberg, the committee chair, said in a statement.
The agreement between the Education and Treasury departments, announced in March, said that the transfer of student-loan accounts would occur in phases, beginning with defaulted student-loan borrowers’ accounts. Later phases would aim to transfer the management of non-defaulted accounts to the Treasury.
Ellen Keast, the department’s press secretary for higher education, said in a statement that the legislation codifies “commonsense partnerships to reduce the federal education bureaucracy and improve education outcomes for our nation’s students.”
The administration has maintained that the Treasury is the best agency to oversee federal student loans. Education Sec. Linda McMahon said in a March statement that the Education Department has “failed to effectively manage” student-loan programs, and Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent said that his agency has “the unique experience, the operational capability, and the financial expertise to bring long overdue financial discipline to the program and be better stewards of taxpayer dollars.”
However, education policy experts and former administration officials have said there’s a lack of evidence that the Treasury has the operational capabilities necessary to facilitate complex student-loan repayment programs. The agencies have not commented on how soon the transfer would begin; the Treasury confirmed to lawmakers in an April letter that it started preparations to take over the defaulted student-loan portfolio.
Rachel Gittleman, president of AFGE Local 252 — which represents Education Department employees — said in a Friday statement that the slate of bills “actually create many more layers of red tape for the American public and for federal employees trying to serve students and families.”
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