GOP Lawmakers Question Choice of Loan Negotiators

Representative John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, has asked Education Secretary Arne Duncan to explain the department's choice of negotiators for rule making panels this month on the federal student loan program. The department has said the negotiations, announced in October, will focus largely on technical issues. But the negotiators are also drawn from consumer protection groups, leading Kline and Representative Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the higher education subcommittee, to ask for the department's rationale for why each constituency is relevant to the technical issues listed in the initial rule making notice, a list of all nominated negotiators, a description of the vetting process and the negotiators' credentials, as well as any new issues the department intends to address at the panel. "We are ... concerned about whether the panel represents the balanced perspective appropriate for any rule making process or is simply an attempt to raise new issues during the negotiation that furthers the policy goals of the administration," Kline and Foxx wrote.