Terminating Restrictive Enforcement of Youth Settlements Law

Floor Speech

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Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise to discuss a CRA resolution that we will be voting on soon, and it is a CRA resolution to challenge a regulation of the Trump administration concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is a venerable and bipartisan program that was first included in the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, supported in a very bipartisan way during the Presidency of President George W. Bush.

The conference report including this program passed the Senate with a 79-to-12 vote, and many of my Republican colleagues, for example, who were there at the time--Senators Grassley, Barrasso, Collins, Murkowski--are still here in the Chamber strongly supporting this program. It has been very bipartisan.

The program is pretty straightforward. It does what it says. It provides loan forgiveness for college and even some graduate loans for students who decide to go into public service careers. The longer you stay in that career, the more you get your loan forgiven. So it was bipartisan recognition that we want people to pursue public service careers.

The administration of public service loan forgiveness was put in the Department of Education, and during the first Trump administration, his first Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, and officials at the Department dramatically reduced the number of public service loans they would forgive. At one point, Secretary DeVos made a comment along the lines of, why is it important to go into public service rather than go into the private sector? They were not approving the forgiveness of loans for those who had gone into public service careers because they didn't fundamentally believe in the program that Congress had in a bipartisan way put into law.

President Biden restored the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to what it was intended and forgave the loans of many people who are pursuing public service careers.

Just, you know, doing what Senators do, what the Presiding Officer and I do, traveling around the State, it has been pretty heartening to meet people and be told, the forgiveness of my student loan at age 35 or at age 45 after a long career as a teacher or another public service or healthcare professional has meant so much to my family and so much to my ability to move ahead.

So that is what the program is--an important one, a bipartisan one, still in law.

The Trump administration has decided--in the midst of dismantling the Department of Education--Secretary McMahon and the President have said they want to dismantle the entire Department. And they are taking pieces of it--career and technical education, for example--and trying to give it to the Department of Labor, which doesn't even want it and isn't really suited to managing it.

Or they are taking the administration of student loans and trying to hand it first to the Small Business Administration, who didn't want to administer it, and then maybe to the Department of Treasury.

In the midst of dismantling or handing off or divesting many programs, the Department has also decided it wants to go after Public Service Loan Forgiveness. But they are doing it in a fairly pernicious way that has earned the objection, not only of folks on my side of the aisle but also the objection of groups like the Cato Institute that are traditionally conservative policy organizations.

What is the regulation that we are challenging? The Trump administration proposes to allow the Secretary--in this case, Secretary McMahon--to individually determine whether or not an individual's job is, in fact, public service and to make that determination based on the Secretary's view of the political viewpoint of the organization for which the individual works and whether that organization is doing something that the administration doesn't like.

Now, this is a pretty dramatic and radical power to put in the hands of the Secretary of Education. Imagine if there was a Democratic President and we said we would give to the Democratic Secretary of Education the ability to determine whether or not a particular student or particular public service worker would receive loan forgiveness after they have chosen their profession to go into.

Now the administration has sort of marketed this as: We don't want to consider for public service jobs that may be doing things that are illegal.

So they said, for example: We would not want to forgive the loan of a person working for an organization that aids and abets people who are here without legal immigration status.

Well, I will give you an example. Public school systems in the United States are required to serve all who register, regardless of immigration status, pursuant to a Supreme Court decision that is about 50 years old. A teacher who works in one of those schools is assisting an undocumented person, a young student who is required by law to serve.

Is that teacher, because the teacher teaches English as a second language or the teacher teaches in a school and offers services to students who do not have lawful immigration status--is that abetting illegal immigration?

The Trump-era regulation would allow the Secretary of Education to say: Yeah, you don't get your loan forgiven because of the particular students you work with because of the particular class you teach-- English is a second language class--because of the percentage of your students who might be here without legal documentation.

So get this. The teacher is required to offer services to those students by a binding Supreme Court precedent, but the Trump-era regulation could allow the Secretary of Education to take that teacher, who has been in that classroom for 10 years or 20 years, and suddenly say: But you don't get Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and the regulation vests that sole decisionmaking authority in the hands of the Secretary of Education.

Give you another example. Part of the healthcare safety net in this country is free clinics. Free clinics provide medical services through physicians and other allied health professionals to all comers, and they generally don't inquire about someone's immigration status.

We need healthcare workers, nurses, doctors, and others to work in free clinics. Someone could say to one of these healthcare professionals, who don't make great salaries in these institutions: Wait a minute. Your clinic provides services to people who are not here with legal documented status. Therefore, we are not going to forgive your loan.

After you have chosen a path and done a job and done it for years and now you feel like you are entitled to have your loans forgiven, suddenly the Secretary of Education could just say: We don't want to forgive your loan.

There is another provision in the regulation that I found challenging. It said loans could not be forgiven for any organization that illegally discriminates. Now, I am against illegal discrimination, and I know every Member of this body is against illegal discrimination.

But the Trump administration has been pushing universities and threatening to cut off their funding if they have diversity programs, arguing that those programs are illegal discrimination, without any court ruling saying that they are illegal discrimination, without other legal justification for their illegal discrimination.

And they have even gone so far as to pressure the president of my flagship university, the University of Virginia, to resign because of diversity programming on the campus. And they threatened to force out the president of another university in Virginia, George Mason University--that president refused to resign--because of the completely unsubstantiated allegation that diversity programming on campus is illegal discrimination.

Now the Trump administration has not been able to get a court to say this is illegal discrimination, but they are forcing universities to even push for the firing of the presidents on their view that diversity programming is illegal discrimination.

So say you have worked and now you are a faculty member or say you have worked and now you work at the university health clinic or say you have worked and now you work for a university custodial service or the university campus police--and you are providing a public service in that way--but the Secretary of Education says: Yeah, but I don't like George Mason's diversity programming. I don't like UVA's diversity programming. So because I don't like the institution you work for, I am going to deny you Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The administration says it wants to go against those who might be working for sanctuary jurisdictions. This is not a label that I have a lot of firsthand experience with in Virginia because I don't believe there are any sanctuary jurisdictions in Virginia, but there are communities in the United States that have declared themselves sanctuary jurisdictions. There are cities and counties. I don't believe any States have.

So what if you are a hardworking police officer and you had a career for a community and after a city council election, there is a new city council that suddenly says we want to be a sanctuary jurisdiction?

The Secretary of Education could say to the hardworking police officer, the hardworking firefighter, the hardworking teacher in the public school system: I don't like what your city council did. Therefore, you are not entitled to Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

I think the idea of politicizing this and giving the Secretary the power to deprive individuals of something they should be entitled to by statute is very, very dangerous.

Let me read some concerns that we have heard expressed. Here was a comment that was made against the Trump regulation from someone in Pennsylvania: My husband's military service is qualifying employment for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The promise of PSLF was, and continues to be, a significant factor in our family's long-term financial planning, helping to make the sacrifices inherent in military service more manageable. We planned our financial future with the understanding that this program exists. To have the rules change significantly or become even more complex would feel like having the rug pulled out from under us. Military life already presents unique challenges for tracking payments and certifications through the frequent moves and deployments.

Streamlining must mean making PSLF more transparent, reliable, and truly manageable for servicemembers and their families with clear communication and accurate tracking. Putting the rules about PSLF up to the determination in each individual case of the Secretary worries a family like this.

Here is another comment submitted for the Record in response to this regulation: PSLF is a critical background to current military readiness directly because of medical services. We are only able to partially fund training of required doctors. We only pay them 20 to 50 percent of what they can make in the private sector. We retain them because of their deep patriotism and the ability to make it make sense by having PSLF after 10 years of public service.

All of these medical specialists and their families give up many other things in service of our troops, dependents, and country. They are not seeking to rob an education from a high-dollar school. They are accepting the lowest-paid medical job because of their passion for the military.

Taking away PSLF for military members or those providers who serve them just makes the sacrifices they make so much more difficult.

And here is a submission from a citizen in Alabama who commented on the proposed regulation: As a physician in Birmingham, AL, I am writing to urge you to protect the PSLF program and income-driven repayment plans. We have many poor and underserved patients in America, and many of these patients are treated by nonprofits who help cover the cost of their care. Without PSLF, physicians are incentivized to, instead, find the highest-paying job or even leave direct patient care in order to find more lucrative positions in the insurance industry or consulting.

PSLF has helped me maintain my values and seek out a job in a nonprofit, serving patients who need them most. Please maintain this program to allow physicians like me to serve their patients.

These are the kinds of concerns people have--hardworking public servants--who would be entitled to loan forgiveness under the bipartisan program that was enacted in 2007.

And my argument to my colleagues is giving this Secretary of Education--or any Secretary of Education, including under a Democratic administration--the ability to cherry-pick this person and that person and say: No, I don't consider you worthy of loan forgiveness because I don't like the politics of the city you live in, the State you live in, or the organization you work for, is a very serious danger.

And I will conclude and just give a related example that is very, very recent of how giving a Cabinet Secretary this power is likely to lead to abuses, and it is related to education. It is not Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but it is related.

In early March, Secretary Hegseth the Secretary of the Department of Defense said that 13 universities in the United States would no longer be eligible to have senior service corps fellowships, and that is senior members of the military assigned to fellowships at the university.

One of the universities was William & Mary in Virginia, the College of William & Mary. And the reason cited for removing the eligibility of these 13 universities was the Secretary decided on his own--as this regulation would allow Secretary McMahon to make this decision on her own--Secretary Hegseth said that William & Mary and the other 13 universities were woke and weak. Because of wokeness and weakness, no longer will we allow senior military service to get fellowships at these universities.

Woke and weak.

We just had an Armed Services Committee hearing. I got to ask the key Pentagon official at the Pentagon: What is woke and weak about the College of William & Mary? It is the Nation's oldest public university. It educated Thomas Jefferson. Its most--one of its most recent chancellors--who is kind of the titular head of the university--was Bob Gates, who was Secretary of Defense under Republican administration. But according to Pete Hegseth, it is woke and weak.

Three weeks after this declaration was made that William & Mary was woke and weak and, thus, could not sponsor senior service corps fellowships, militaryfriendly.com ruled--awarded William & Mary the label as the most military- and veteran-friendly university in the United States. And that was based on data--1,600 students at William & Mary who are active or a veteran--an active ROTC program in the Army; an active ROTC program in the Navy; a clinic at the law school, the Lewis Puller clinic, where law students help veterans access VA benefits; a unique program in the school of education at William & Mary that--it might be unique in the country--that trains individuals to provide counseling to members of the military and their families.

The same publication militaryfriendly.com said that the MBA program at the College of William & Mary was the best MBA program in the country for military members and veterans. And yet a Cabinet member said that is woke and weak.

And so you could easily imagine people who are serving veterans at William & Mary in the veterans clinic, people who are providing counseling training in the counseling center, working other programs, who themselves might feel like they qualified for Public Service Loan Forgiveness--but now the Secretary of Defense has said the whole institution is woke and weak--you could easily see them because of that capricious and arbitrary label, which is against all evidence, you could see them deprived of the opportunity to have their loans forgiven.

This regulation just puts too much power in the unaccountable hands of a single person. We should not allow it to happen under either a Democratic or a Republican administration. For that reason, I will bring this motion to the floor presently.

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