From: Weekly Standard
A Department of Education proposal gets closer to being a reality.
The Department of Education’s proposal to broaden the existing borrower defense to repayment rule will give college students new grounds to sue their schools for loan forgiveness. Underemployed grads and downtrodden dropouts can claim they were misled and never got their federally loaned money’s worth. But the biggest problem with the proposal is the price tag. Indeed, the potential cost to taxpayers is virtually inestimable in its vastness: somewhere between two and 43 billion dollars, according to the Office of Management and Budget.
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Nothing’s really changed since then, although opposition to the rule has advanced in step with its progress. Taxpayer advocates say the rule’s steady march toward enactment, despite its alarmingly uncertain price tag, is due to the administration’s political preference. Late last month, a coalition of taxpayer defense groups who’ve continually called foul to no avail coauthored a letter to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which currently in the process of reviewing the rule.