Texas AFT is among 86 organizations representing millions of student loan borrowers who submitted joint comments this week to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) on proposed regulations implementing the unprecedented changes to the federal student loan program and the student loan system dictated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA).
This bill makes significant cuts to long-standing safety net programs to offset $4 trillion in tax breaks for billionaires and the biggest corporations. It slashes $300 billion from federal financial aid and the student loan program, eliminating certain loan programs, limiting loan amounts, and significantly increasing costs for millions of borrowers to repay their federal student loan debt.
Additionally, the OBBBA gutted Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion and cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by $186 billion. As a result, state legislatures are likely to make substantial cuts to state higher education funding, leading to even higher tuition costs.
The 86 groups are urging officials to protect student loan borrowers from the unprecedented, vast, and harmful changes to the student loan system. The comments warn that the ED’s proposed Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) regulations will increase monthly payments for millions, including those with the lowest incomes. The regulations would also have the effect of pushing graduate students in critical fields like nursing, social work, and education toward risky private loans which could trigger a surge in defaults, which are already sky high.
Our partners at Protect Borrowers have a deep dive into how OBBBA makes paying for college more expensive and even more risky. These changes would come as Americans face a severe affordability crisis spanning every aspect of their financial lives.
While the groups acknowledge that rescinding the OBBBA’s harmful provisions is beyond the ED’s rulemaking authority, we all urge the ED to do all it can to cushion the impact on borrowers forced into the more expensive repayment plans, protect borrowers from servicing errors, and ensure students can enter critical professions without needing to turn to risky private loans.