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As Congress remained unable to come together on another coronavirus relief package, House Democrats and higher education advocates attacked the emergency orders signed by President Trump as inadequate.
Trump has extended help for most student loan borrowers, allowing them to continue to skip making payments through the end of the year without interest accruing. Borrowers had been excused from making payments in the last package passed by Congress, the CARES Act. But they had faced having to make payments again on Oct. 1.
However, Ben Miller, vice president for postsecondary education at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, at a virtual forum of the House education committee on Friday called the order “an insufficient step that leaves millions of borrowers in the lurch and lacks meaningful details.”
Miller, a senior policy adviser in the Education Department during the Obama administration, also said that Trump’s orders do not include aid to states to keep them from making large cuts in higher education funding, or give additional money to colleges taking a financial hit during the pandemic. Calling for Congress to take action, Miller said, “time is running out before calamity ensues.”
The executive order “does nothing to help state and local governments avoid making deep cuts to public education funding,” Congressman Bobby Scott, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said. It “does not help colleges and universities avoid widespread layoffs.” Republicans on the committee didn’t participate in what was largely a Democratic forum to attack Trump and Republicans for not going along with the Democratic proposal for the next relief bill. Republicans on the committee had hailed the student loan executive order on Twitter, saying it extended Trump and Congress's "decisive action to suspend interest & monthly payments on federally held student loans through the bipartisan CARES Act."
However, Miller said continuing the moratorium on making student loan payments would leave out eight million borrowers with federal loans from private banks and those with Perkins loans, who were left out of being excused from making payments in the CARES Act. Democrats had proposed they be included in the next relief package.
Democrats had also proposed extending the moratorium a year, until October 2021, but Miller noted borrowers under Trump’s order would have to begin making payments on Jan. 1. “There’s little chance the economy will be in strong shape by then.”
He also said it’s unknown whether borrowers would automatically be excused from making payments, or if they would have to opt in.
