How The Trump Administration is Harming Student Borrowers

Today's guest hosts are Charlotte Hancock, Communications Director for Generation Progress, and Brent Cohen, Executive Director of Generation Progress and the VP of the Center for American Progress.

They discuss how the Trump administration is hurting student borrowers.  For context, last week, Politico announced that it had obtained over 2,000 pages of emails outlining the efforts of student loan industry lobbying groups to persuade the Trump Administration to block states from regulating some student loan companies. One email in particular stood out – a personal email from the CEO of Navient, Jack Remondi, to a top aide to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in September 2017. It asked the administration, in urgent language, to assert that states do not have the authority to regulate federal student loan collection companies. The set of emails, and the fact that the Trump administration did go on to make the declaration that the student loan companies had requested, are a reminder of the corruption that is rampant in the department under Secretary DeVos.

The guests for this topic are Suzanne Martindale, Senior Policy Counsel & Western States Legislative Manager for Consumer Reports, and Mike Pierce, Policy Director and Managing Counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center.

Their website for Consumer Reports Advocacy is Advocacy.ConsumerReports.org and their Twitter handle is @CRAdvocacy. The website for the Student Borrower Protection Center is ProtectBorrowers.org and their Twitter handle is @theSBPC.  Mike Pierce's handle is @Millennial_Debt.

The website for "The Center for American Progress" is www.AmericanProgress.org and their Twitter Handle is @amprog.

Charlotte Hancock's Twitter handle is @CharlatAnne and Brent Cohen's handle is @BrentJCohen.