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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 

OFFICE OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION 

AFFORDABILITY AND STUDENT LOANS COMMITTEE 

SESSION 2, DAY 4, AFTERNOON 

November 4, 2021 

On the 4th day of November, 2021, the 

following meeting was held virtually, from 1:00 p.m. 

to 4:00 p.m., before Jamie Young, Shorthand Reporter in 

the state of New Jersey. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

P R O C E E D I N G S 

MR. ROBERTS: Hi. Good afternoon 

everyone my name is Brady Roberts with FMCS I'll be 

facilitating this afternoon. I just want to I do see 

your hand and I just want to mention that we have Carol 

in for Proprietary Institutions and Greg and for 

Dependent Students. So welcome to the both of you. 

Daniel, go ahead. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Sorry, I just wanted 

to return to one thought on the institutional liability, 

Jennifer, and reflecting over lunch, which provided me a 

chance to reflect, which I appreciate. I am wondering if 

the Department is willing to consider on the six year 

three year issue a carve out for those issues that 

pertain to record retention. So again, I personally, my 

constituency, would be supportive of six years if there 

were a carve out for those issues that relate to record 

retention, specifically stated in the regulations. So 

three years for those that relate to record retention, 

six years for other issues, and I'm offering that as a 

potential solution to move us forward in good faith. 

MS. SABOUNEH: And Daniel just to add 

on there, I would be okay with that as well. That was 

one of the things I (inaudible) down. So if you're 

comfortable with that Jennifer. (Inaudible) Department 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

will be. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Daniel and 

Misty. David, I see your hand too. 

MR. TANDBERG: I mean, it certainly 

sounds reasonable on the face of it. I just wonder how 

many cases wouldn't involve some need for record 

retention? Yeah. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Sorry, can I respond 

David? Specifically, what I'm referring to is the record 

retention relating to the making of or disbursement of 

the direct loan. Which is the particular piece that is 

in regulation, about the three year record retention. 

So, you know, to the, to the extent of false advertising 

or misleading job placement rates or other issues that 

may come up, those don't have the same three year 

requirement necessarily. So in those cases, you know, 

again, I'm open to something different. But 

specifically, were in regulation, there's no need to 

retain beyond three years, it feels disingenuous to give 

people the option to discard and then require they 

provide the proof. So again, I'm trying to find a carve 

out that would meet the Department's needs and the 

institution's needs. 

MS. HONG: I just want to make sure I 

understand what that would look like. So right now, we 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

have proposed six years to recover from, from the 

institution and you're suggesting that because we only 

require institutions to retain records pertaining to 

their financial aid disbursement of the students for 

three years that when we come back after the expiration 

(three years), again, which institution-- that's just 

what we require. Institutions can retain the records 

beyond the three years as well. I just want to make that 

clear that that's just something that we require. But 

certainly institutions are free to retain those records. 

If we go back and request records beyond the three years 

related to a BD claim---

MR. BARKOWITZ: Yeah so let me try to 

respond if I can. So I think Misty's point is really 

valid. So in audits right now we're being called to task 

for for keeping records beyond the required retention 

period, because of cyber risk. So at the same time, 

we're being asked not to retain records indefinitely, 

that's different than academic records. And again, I'm 

speaking specifically about financial aid records. So 

there is an audit risk for an institution as well as a 

security risk and a cybersecurity risk to keep those 

records beyond the minimum required retention period. So 

again, I make no no comment or claim about the validity 

or ability of the Department to cancel loans under 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

borrower defense. My concern is specifically on 

institutional liability, when again, institutions not 

going to be prepared to respond effectively and can't 

defend itself because of the of the timing issue. So, 

you know, the carve out may have to do with, if the 

issue of the borrower defense is related to the making 

of the loan, then those that those portions cannot be 

collected from institution beyond the period of the 

three years. Is that helpful, Jennifer? 

MS. HONG: Yes, thank you. I will take 

that back and thank you for flushing out the the audit 

risk and a cybersecurity risk. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you. Joe, I just 

saw your hand, but then it just went down. 

MR. SANDERS: Yeah, sorry, I'm hitting 

the button too many times. Just a quick point. Isn't the 

institution on notice, once they get the request for 

response, not on adjudication, but on the on the 

borrower side? Right, so there's a request for a 

response that comes on the borrower side, and I think 

that should probably suffice to put the institution I 

noticed that the Department could come after you in the 

adjudication process. 

MR. ROBERTS: David, I see you 

nodding, go ahead. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Sorry. Joe, can you 

provide clarity? So So again, as I understood it, the 

borrower submitted let's talk about the application, the 

borrower submits an application, the Department reviews 

the application and issues or requests to the 

institution to respond. Are you saying there's a time 

before that where the school is asked to respond? And if 

so, I don't understand where that would be, maybe I'm 

missing something. 

MR. SANDERS: No, I think we're on the 

same page. I'm just saying that that comes strategically 

and timeline wise before any recruitment proceeding. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Yes. And so I agree 

with you once a request comes, then the three year 

waiver doesn't apply, or the six year waiver doesn't 

apply if that request comes within the three or six year 

period. But my concern is a borrower comes back seven 

years, to use example, four years later, four years 

after graduation and says, the institution defrauded me 

in the making of my loan and I'm using that as a 

rationale to submit my borrower defense to repayment. 

There's no way for the institution to respond at that 

point. And simultaneously, Joe, if and this, again, goes 

back to the reason why I support Justin's requests, or 

rather sorry, Josh's requests for timeliness, if the 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

borrower submits an application, year one, but the 

Department doesn't approach the school until you're 

seven, then that's not the school's fault. And it's 

difficult at that point for the school who's not been 

put on notice. But I agree with you once that once the 

school has been put on notice, and it's within the 

waiver, timeframe, limitation timeframe, they're 

required to respond. So I think we're I think we're on 

the same page 

MR. ROBERTS: Anything else on this 

topic? Thank you, all of you, that was that was helpful. 

I want to quickly point out before we move on to the 

next issue that John is at the table on behalf of 

Individuals with Disabilities or Groups Representing 

them, so welcome, John. Jennifer, are we ready for issue 

paper number nine, Predispute Arbitration? 

MS. HONG: Yes. 

MR. ROBERTS: Okay, great. 

MS. HONG: Let me just pull it up 

here. And actually, while I pull it up, we can Vanessa 

or the Department pull it up and they already did-- step 

ahead of me. Okay, so just to recap, we did have 

proposed language during session one. From what I 

recall, there was a lot of agreement about that language 

regarding predispute arbitration and class action 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

waivers. Some minor comments, and we went back and we 

addressed them. So let me just walk you through these. 

Basically, to begin with, we're looking at 685.300, 

which has to do with agreements between an eligible 

school and the Secretary for participation in the direct 

loan program. Nothing's changed in the general (a) 

section, paragraph (b) under Program Participation 

Agreement. Again, the regulatory text provides the terms 

of the program participation agreement of a school that 

wishes to participate in the direct loan program. We 

just went back and (b) 7 and (b) 10 are just kind of 

minor technical changes. We added a (b) (11), as you see 

there just to conform with the changes we made about 

credits to dispute arbitration and class action waiver 

rules that as a condition of its TPA to ensure that 

schools comply with a predispute arbitration class 

action waiver rules regarding BD claims and disputes. No 

changes under paragraph C. Paragraph D, this is what we 

provided before--basically this is just reinstating the 

2016 regulations in full. Remember these were rescinded 

in 2019, and the basic principle is that we wanted to 

ensure that schools cannot compel students to pursue a 

complaint about a BD claim through an internal dispute 

process. And also that students would be able to present 

their complaint to an accredited or relevant government 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

agency. Under paragraph E Class Action bands, some 

guiding principles under here-- again, we've reinstated 

the regulations that were in effect in 2016. Except that 

we added that verbiage from earlier-- under (e) (iii) 

romanette (iii) clarifying the deadline by which notice 

must be made. Paragraph F predispute arbitration 

agreements says, schools will not enter into a 

predispute arbitration to arbitrate a BD claim. 

Students, however, can enter into a postdispute 

arbitration claim. So a reliance on a predispute 

agreement with respect to BD claim means it's included, 

but is not limited to, seeking dismissal, deferral, or 

stay of a judicial action, avoiding discovery, or filing 

claim in arbitration. And some required provisions are 

that the school must include a predispute arbitration 

agreement that includes the following checks. We agree 

that for predispute arbitration agreements already 

enforced that don't contain the above text, we must 

amend the PDA, the predispute agreement to add text, or 

provide the written notice to that provision. And you 

also, to provide notice by the earlier of either the 

exit counseling or the date that the school files this 

initial response to a demand for arbitration. So again, 

the only change that we have here since session one is 

under F (iii) romanette 3 (i) clarifying the deadline by 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

which the notice must be made. And then new points--

then the very new concepts that we've integrated here, 

what we heard during session one is under paragraph, G 

and H. And this is based upon our discussion of 

regarding publication in a centralized database. And 

that arbitral records that are submitted to the 

Department. We had that in session one, this committee 

or members of this committee suggested that we go a step 

further and publish those records in a centralized 

database and we've incorporated that language here under 

G. And then respectively under H for the submission of 

judicial records, requiring them to submit those records 

to us and also to publish those records in a centralized 

database. Under paragraph I, we just clarified the 

definition of BD claim in response to the 11th Circuit 

Ruling regarding Young vs Grand Canyon. And then 

finally, we, I think that brings us to the end. We have 

some, let me see here. Yeah, I'll just, I will just stop 

there. Vanessa, can you scroll down just a little bit? 

That's the end of the document. Yes, okay. 

MR. ROBERTS: Did you want to take 

some comments and questions? 

MS. HONG: Yes, that would be great. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great, and Vanessa, you 

could bring down the document. Thank you. I see Josh, go 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

ahead. 

MR. ROVENGER: Thanks. So first of 

all, just to reiterate how appreciative we are that the 

Department is bringing back the predispute arbitration 

and class action provisions. These are are absolutely 

necessary to ensure that borrowers are able to get full 

relief. And in particular, I do think that the change to 

the borrower defense definition could have the biggest, 

substantive concern as of the drafting of the prior 

version, and so very appreciative of that change. On 

board with this, I do, I do think that there are at 

least two ways it can be improved. And we you know, 

we've been thinking a lot about one in particular--

questions of enforcement. Because as of right now, a 

school that relies on a predispute arbitration 

agreement, or that fails to provide the required notice, 

doesn't really face any clear consequences, even if the 

result is that the students’ claims are improperly sent 

to arbitration. And one idea we had is that the 

Department can make clear in these regulations that 

student loan borrowers are the intended third party 

beneficiaries of these provisions. And then we have some 

proposed language, which I'll drop into the chat in a 

second. And I do want to make one thing very clear with 

respect to this language, it wouldn't create a new rate 
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of action, borrowers would be asserting preexisting 

rates under state or Federal consumer protection, 

contract, or civil rights law. But it would be providing 

a mechanism for borrowers to use the provisions 

essentially as a shield and if the school tries to 

compel arbitration. And then the other kind of area 

where improvement we think is possible, relates to the 

required notice to the Department, if a school is going 

to try and compel arbitration or assert a claim directly 

in arbitration. You know, I think I expressed last time 

that we've seen schools dispute that a set of facts 

could ever constitute a borrower defense claim, 

notwithstanding how it's defined in the provision. And 

so we think that the provision should clearly state that 

a claim concerns a borrower defense for purposes of 

these regulations. If the plaintiff or any party in the 

action is asserting that this would constitute a 

borrower defense. That way it would be on notice of the 

provision. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Josh. Carol, go 

ahead. 

DR. COLVIN: I would like to request a 

quick 10 to 15 minute caucus with the accrediting 

agencies and institutional representatives with both the 

primary and alternate negotiators, if that's possible. 
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MR. ROBERTS: I believe Kayla's the 

host of the meeting, so I might have you repeat those 

names very briefly just that constituency names and then 

we'll get that set up. 

DR. COLVIN: The Accrediting Agencies, 

Minority Serving Institutions, Financial Aid 

Administrators, FFEL Agencies, two year public colleges, 

four year public colleges, private nonprofit, and 

proprietary schools. 

MS. MACK: For my team, we're going to 

need to do that just a touch slower because all of these 

individuals have to be moved individually. So let's hold 

on for just a second. Emil, if you've got the group's if 

you could read out the names happy to take that. I think 

we could go offline and live while we sort this out and 

then we will plan on being back in 10 to 15 minutes. So 

Emil if you could read off names that would be really 

helpful. 

MR. ROBERTS: Welcome back, everyone. 

Thank you for your patience during that caucus period. I 

wanted to turn it over to Carol who initially called the 

caucus. Carol, if you just want to come off of mute and 

feel free to speak a little bit. 

DR. COLVIN: I just want to say thank 

you to everybody that participated in the caucus. 
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Jessica and I have been working with our constituency, 

on a proposal that we feel like would be in the best 

interest of our students and I definitely appreciate the 

feedback that we received. So there is some additional 

data that we would like to gather. So for the purpose of 

a temperature check at this point, we would probably 

vote no, but just know that that's because we are still 

we would like to gather some more data and we are still 

working for towards a solution on a very what we see is 

a very complicated issue. I very much appreciate the 

feedback. 

MR. ROBERTS: Sure. Are you able to 

put that data request in the chat just so we have it as 

part of the transcript? Thank you. And then David, go 

ahead. 

MR. TANDBERG: Thank you so much. So 

my concern is the extent to which the new red lines 

would extend to contracts with third party providers, 

OPMs, private contractors of the college and 

universities themselves. We know that there are examples 

of these contracts requiring predispute arbitration and 

attempting to protect the third party provider from 

lawsuits, class action lawsuits and alike. And so we 

feel like it would be important that the language 

reflect the extension of these restrictions to contracts 
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and their contract doors. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, David. And I 

just want to just note that Bethany's back at the table 

for Groups Representing Individuals with Disabilities. 

So welcome back. Bethany. Brian, I see you just came up 

if you just want to respond. 

MR. SIEGEL: Yeah, just to respond to 

David. As you know, there's a lot of litigation over the 

arbitration provisions and, you know, to be blunt, our 

language in 2016 is one of the few to survive litigation 

challenges. So my immediate reaction is, I'm concerned 

about extending it to control contracts that don't 

directly relate to our programs. So if you can provide 

us some legal analysis, you know, taking into account, 

you know, the case law on arbitrary on limits of 

agencies to limit the party/parties rights to require 

arbitration, you know, we'd be happy to take a look at 

it. But my initial reaction is I don't see where we have 

the authority. 

MR. TANDBERG: Yeah, I will, admit 

that's not something I could provide immediately. And we 

need to recruit legal assistance. My my concern is the 

spirit of this regulatory language is to protect 

students' rights to legal pass that aren't limited to 

predispute arbitration. That spirit is not null and void 
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if the contractors, the contracts with the people 

actually providing the services are mandating previous 

dispute arbitration. So we, we lose the effect of the 

regulatory language via these contracts. And so yeah, I 

would be interested now or in the future, working with 

the Department to take a serious look at this because 

more and more it isn't the institution that's delivering 

these services, it's a third party. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks David and Brian. 

I see Josh's hand next, go ahead. 

MR. ROVENGER: Thanks. Yeah, I first 

want to echo David's concern and but also completely 

recognized, Brian, the position that you just put 

forward in that, you know, at the end of the day, these 

regs have survived legal challenge. And so in a thorny 

area of law, you certainly don't want to do anything to 

risk that. You know, I do think, again, whether whether 

it's at this table or at a future table, that the 

Department should not only evaluate its authority with 

respect to the topics that David mentioned, but we think 

that there may be a basis as well to extend to private 

lenders, and in particular preferred lenders. In 

addition to the same statutory provision at issue here, 

for by way of one example, 20, USC 1094, subsection 27, 

might have some bearing on that issue. Again, also, like 
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David, happy to work on putting something together, not 

necessary, it doesn't have to be up this table but would 

love to see, as far as the Department can go on that in 

the future, I'd love to see it. 

MR. ROBERTS: I see Daniel next. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Thank you. To David's 

point, I, I am, I would be supportive if we could define 

what provision of services means. So there are lots of 

third party contractors that are used by institutions of 

all kinds, for example, you know, we have Valencia have 

a contract with an agency to help students in loan 

repayment, manage their loan repayment and not wind up 

in default. You know, is that, would that be subjected 

to this? If we use a third party for, you know, for 

Ability to Benefit testing, would that be subject to 

this? So, so at what point are we in control of those 

contracts? And could we as institutions dictate terms? 

So, you know, again, I'm open to this David, but I want 

a much clearer definition of what that constitutes, as, 

as a part of, you know, what is considered delivery of 

educational services under that under that piece? As as 

a as a statement, right, our institution doesn't have 

any contract with students. So when a student walks in 

the door, the contract is, you know, is their 

enrollment, there's no written contract that a student 
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signs. So, you know, that I go back to the earlier 

conversation we had about the definition of a contract, 

you know, I understand that they're making a verbal 

agreement, or a non-written agreement, but you know, I 

don't know, and I would have to review every single 

vendor contract about the use of arbitration under that 

under that piece. 

MR. ROBERTS: Joe, I see your hand but 

David do you want to immediately respond to. 

MR. TANDBERG: Yeah, I mean, frankly, 

ideally, I would love for that to happen for all the 

contracts to be reviewed and to see if they mandate 

predispute arbitration because I don't think mandating 

predispute arbitration is ever on the face of it, 

appropriate, right. And so that that would be my initial 

reaction, of course, that's just my opinion. But um, 

yeah, that would definitely be the goal. And I, and I, 

yeah, it's not so much the contract with the student but 

the contract with the vendor that I'm referring to. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: And again, I don't, I 

don't know, and we'd have to review whether if I can 

respond whether the if there is arbitration required is 

that arbitration with the institution, who is typically 

the consumer of the service offered by the vendor, 

versus to your point, a private lender, where the 
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contract is about student service. So, you know, I think 

it would depend it's a very fine point, but it would 

depend on the type of service being provided. 

MR. TANDBERG: And I would be, in 

cases where it's mandating predispute arbitration 

involving the student would be that I'd be concerned 

about. Thank you. 

MR. ROBERTS: Joe, go ahead. 

MR. SANDERS: Yeah, I just, I want to 

echo, Dave and Josh's concern, and I want to do that by 

raising a very specific, specific example. My colleagues 

in California are about to start a trial against 

Bridgepoint Ashford for profit-school. Allegations of 

predatory conduct including including predatory 

enrollment. The parent company for Bridgepoint Ashford 

Zovio, has now become one of these service providers a 

contract with the University of Arizona. And so I think 

you're seeing predatory actors move into this service 

provision space. And although I agree, there may not be 

room to negotiate this, right now, I would urge the 

Department to to think about this issue and whether or 

not students are being mandated into predispute 

agreements, regarding services provided by these service 

providers, because that's potentially problematic from 

an AG perspective. You know, we we want students to be 
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able to enforce their own rights, we don't want 

everything to fall solely to, to law enforcement on 

these issues. And when one last point, to Daniel's 

comment about loan repayment providers, I'm not sure 

that this is specifically what Daniel's talking about, 

but another term for some of those actors is cohort, 

cohort, default management companies. And we have grave 

concerns about forbearance steering with regard to those 

companies, something that I think Daniels alternate, 

even raised the other day. So there's a lot of you UDAP 

issues that AG sees with service providers, and we would 

love to to help the Department with an analysis of you 

know, whether this predispute issue goes to those 

providers. I don't know the answer off the top of my 

head, but I think it's a great question raised by by 

David and Josh. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Joe. Yeah, 

Jennifer, go ahead. I think you're muted right now, 

Jennifer. 

MS. HONG: I was just saying I 

appreciate this line of discussion and I don't mean to 

take us off of it I just wanted to double check with 

Carol. Was Carol, Carol, was your request for data was 

that for us or were you suggesting you needed to have 

further conversations with your constituency on this 
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issue? 

DR. COLVIN: We're, we're determining 

that. I will let you know what data we'd like for you 

guys to provide, if that's okay. Gotta meet on our next 

break. 

MR. ROBERTS: Sounds good. Alright, so 

I'm not seeing any other hands and given that there's 

some potential data requests that need to be formed and 

then as well as some proposed language. Jennifer, do you 

have what what you need from the Department's 

perspective right now on this issue? 

MS. HONG: Yeah, we are just we're 

eager to hear back from, you know, Carol and the 

institution's on if they need anything else further from 

us. You know, what their thoughts are, that would be 

great. 

MR. ROBERTS: So why don't we do this, 

if we could just do a quick temperature check on this, 

and then we'll just take a quick 10 minute break just to 

give some more time for that discussion and then we'll 

come back with our next topic. So, oh, go ahead, 

Michaela. 

MS. MARTIN: No, I was gonna ask if 

after the break we're moving on or you're coming back to 

that? I'm ready for IDR. 
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MR. ROBERTS: Right, right, I think if 

we're okay, a temperature check right now, given that 

there's a little bit still out there, and then a quick 

10 minute break and then moving into IDR. So if that's 

amenable to the group, could I see a show of thumbs on 

issue paper number nine. Great, thank you, everyone and 

Carol, I see your thumb down. And I know that we're 

going right into a break after this for specifically 

that, but is there anything else that you want to add to 

this discussion on this topic? 

MS. HONG: No. We're wanting to 

collect a little bit more information for our proposal. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great. So with that, I 

appreciate that conversation. Let's take a quick 10 

minute break and come back at 2:15 Eastern time. We're 

actually going to begin with Raj with with a data 

presentation on IDR. So I'll see everyone then. Thank 

you so much. Welcome back, everyone. Thank you so much 

for your patience during that short break. I hope you 

enjoyed it. Before we turn it over to Raj for a 

presentation on Income Driven Repayment, I want to turn 

it back over to Carol. 

DR. COLVIN: Thank you. Before we move 

forward, we just had a couple of questions regarding the 

reporting requirements that are proposed in the issue 
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page paper number nine. We'd like to know exactly what 

data the Department is requesting, and then what the 

reason for the collection of the data is? And with that, 

what information does the Department intend to publish 

publicly? It seems that there might be a privacy concern 

and we wanted to address that. And then we're also 

concerned that with the publication of this data, that 

it could present to be an inhibitor to prevent certain 

students from seeking to resolve issues as not wanting 

their personal information published. Jennifer, would 

you be able to comment on that? 

MS. HONG: Sure, and you're I believe 

you're referring to the submission of arbitral and 

judicial records? I think the attempt here, and we 

discussed this in session one was really to, you know, 

get an understanding of some of this and really to kind 

of shine a light on on what these agreements and records 

look like. I think it's just a matter of transparency. 

And there was a a second question, I think about 

privacy, obviously, subject to protecting privacy. And 

we wouldn't be releasing any records with PII in it, 

Personally Identifying Information. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great, thanks Carol, for 

that and then anything that you want to pop into the 

chat as it relates to predispute arbitration, feel free 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

to. Okay, we are at 2:20 I want to turn it over to our 

advisor, Raj Darolia for his presentation on IDR. And 

just as a reminder, we are a little over an hour out 

from public comments. So folks who are registered, try 

to log in a little bit early. But with that, Raj, I'll 

turn it over to you. 

MR. DAROLIA: Thanks all for inviting 

me to talk about IDR again. What I'm going to be doing 

today is try to dive a little bit deeper into how we 

might think about some of the potential changes to 

income assessments and protection, but not really 

thinking about who the primary beneficiaries for some of 

these changes are and thinking about folks who have 

different levels of income and debt. What I want to 

before doing that just tell you a little bit about the 

three supplementary documents that I included along with 

this presentation. So the first one is a letter where 

it's framed as a letter, but it's a report by the Q 

Charitable Trusts. So what I'm going to be doing today 

is trying to help develop some intuition about again, 

and changing some of these policy levers today with 

different levels of income and debt. But what they did 

is to give some examples of some of these policy 

changes, potential policy changes, such as changing 

income assessments, or protection levels, using 
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historical data on kind of typical borrowing, typical 

income growth, typical debt loads, for kind of exemplar 

students of a handful of different types. So somebody 

who's non completer, somebody who gets an associate's 

degree, someone who gets a bachelor's degree, and 

somebody with a graduate degree. So the intent of that 

is to really try to take some of these conversations and 

put some more, more historical data on it. Whereas in 

these presentations, what I'm trying to do is not move 

too many things at the same time, right. So as we've 

talked about before, when you change a lot of different 

inputs, household size, inflation assumptions, income 

assumptions, you can change the the results in different 

ways. So what I'm trying to do in these presentations is 

sort of change one thing at a time, so that you can see 

the effects of it. But that letter is going to give you 

some exemplars for some, some, some kind of typical 

borrowers will call them based on good data, on again, 

income growth, income levels, debt levels. The second 

document that I provided is a summary from Dr. Leslie 

Turner, who's a professor at Vanderbilt. And this is in 

part Joe mentioned last last session about wanting to 

see some research on things like-- sometimes researchers 

call this choice architecture. But how do we encourage 

students to opt in or get defaulted into the right, or 
26 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

get defaulted, I guess, it's not a choice necessarily. 

But, if they, know, which plan to choose, you know, 

helping folks get into certain plans. And so what 

Leslie's put together, is a summary of what we're gonna 

call kind of the best research right now, on some of the 

barriers. Again, some of this is going to be directly 

related to the IDR discussion, some of it's just going 

to be more broadly about repayment plans. And then the 

third piece is from Dr. Dominique Baker, who's a 

professor at Southern Methodist University and you know, 

what I asked her to opine upon with specific challenges 

that students, students of color, face in some of the 

student loan programs, again, part of its going to be 

directly related to the IDR take up issue. But some of 

its more general than that, as well. And so, you know, 

these are all outside documents, you know, whereas all 

you have constituencies that you're representing. I'll 

say that I'm trying to represent the constituency of 

researchers and data experts. And so this is me asking 

some experts on some of these issues to help provide 

some knowledge to the committee. I'm not going to go 

over any of these documents in any sort of detail during 

the session, but I did want to provide them to you so 

you guys can have your your light bedtime reading 

tonight. But that said, what I'm going to do is go ahead 
27 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

and jump into the presentation. Today, we're going to be 

talking about a new fictional borrower named Miles. So 

some of the same caveats that we had before, these are 

illustrative examples, not going to incorporate things 

like common repayment offense, like deferment, or other 

things I can talk about where that might affect things 

in certain scenarios. What I'm going to show you is also 

some comparisons to the standard plan, but I'm not going 

to model in here explicitly is whether somebody is 

eligible for that IDR plan or not. And then as far as 

the inputs and assumptions, this is going to be largely 

similar to the example I gave in the last section, that 

borrower was named Iris, but for Miles we're going to 

look at a variety of different income profiles. And so 

the income profiles have been looked at as somebody who 

has a starting income of 15,000, starting income of 25k, 

35k, 45k. But the rest of those assumptions are going to 

be similar to what we showed. So let's start with Miles 

on the assumption that he makes $25,000 a year and has a 

loan debt of $30,000. So in this first column here, 

standard repayment, this is going to be the repayment 

that he would have, under the standard 10 year repayment 

plan would have a monthly payment of about $300, and 

based on some assumptions about income growth again 

about two and a half percent annually, he’s going to pay 
28 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

about 9 to 14% of his income every month, over those 10 

years. On net, on net, he's going to pay almost $36,000 

for this loan has zero forgiven and make 120 payments, 

basically every month, for 10 years. The second column 

here is current case for IVR. And so this is going to be 

with the protection at 150%. And percent of 

discretionary income of 10%. As we saw last time, what 

this means is a substantially lower monthly payment 

amount, again, that's going to change over time, as 

Miles, as income grows over time, we're still gonna 

take 10% of that discretionary income. If we think about 

what that means, as a percentage of gross income, he's 

gonna pay about 2 to 2 and a half percent of his gross 

income every month for his whole period. He's gonna pay 

much less than he would have under the standard 

repayment plan, but also have a big forgiveness amount 

of almost $37,000, at the end of those 20 years. As we 

move from left to right here, columns 1-4 what we're 

going to do is increase the income protection. So this 

is going 175%, 200%, 250%, and 300%. I'm not going to go 

through all these in detail, we did something similar to 

this last session. But one of the things I want to point 

out here is that the marginal benefit from miles at 

$25,000 a year and this student loan debt amount doesn't 

really change once we get to these higher levels of 
29 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

income protection. Because by the time we get to 200% 

income production here in this column here, Miles 

effectively is making zero payments or $0 payments, 

right? That's making 10 point, 10% income share of those 

$0, you know, or discretionary income, and-- 240 

payments over those 20 years, but it's not actually 

paying. So, if, for example, there was an increase in 

the income protection from 200 to 250% for Miles’ level 

of income and student loan debt, there is basically zero 

marginal benefit for Miles in this in this scenario. So 

to try to summarize some of this information in a 

graphical form, and what I'm going to do is add on some 

other income levels as we go through. What I've done is 

basically plotted the amount paid here for Miles at 

different levels of income protection (inaudible). So we 

can think about here, for Miles making $25,000 a year, 

that's what that 25k means, under the current plan and 

with the 150% income protection level he's paid about 

$15,000 per year. That's going to get progressively less 

until we hit the 200% protection level. And then again, 

as we go this way, and that income protection gets more 

generous, the marginal benefit for Miles will basically 

be nothing overtime, in that way. And so this blue 

dashed line here on this graph is the total amount paid 

under the standard repayment plan, just to give people a 
30 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

sense of what that means. So we can go ahead and start 

to then plot people, you know, fictional borrowers with 

similar assumed inputs, but different income levels on 

this graph. So for example, here now, the second line 

with the X's instead of the circles, it's going to be 

somebody at making $15,000 a year, again, with student 

loan debt at $30,000. As you can see that at least in 

this range of income protection level, this person gets 

to no marginal benefit, for the most part, increasing 

marginal income protection, because they're already 

going to be having a discretionary income, basically 

below the income protection level, and therefore, kind 

of no better or worse off if we raise income protection. 

Now, as we start to add people of higher incomes, this 

is the next person, this is somebody who's making 

$35,000 a year. So Miles, instead, is making $35,000 a 

year to start, as we can see here, this, this borrower 

is going to get benefits in lower amounts paid, as we 

move farther out into the protection levels, as well. 

Sorry, what I'm going to show you next is a similar 

table to what I showed before. But this time, I'm for 

somebody making $45,000 a year. And I'll return to the 

graph here in a second. But I just want to show you 

something---just start again, develop some intuition on 

how we might think about some of these things with 
31 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

people of different income models. So this is Miles 

again, let's assume Miles starts at $45,000, a year, 

instead of the 25, or 15, or 35. What we can see is for 

some level here, we are going to have in total paid 

increasing up until about the 200% income level. And 

then it'll start to decline once it gets to an even 

higher amount. And there's a couple reasons for this. 

One, is you can see that, as we have income protection 

in IDR, we're going to have lower monthly payments. And 

as we talked about before, what that typically does is 

reduce payments monthly, but extend the amount of time 

that somebody is going to pay those loans and extend the 

total amount that they would pay. And then as we get 

farther out for this borrower Miles at $45,000 a year, 

the total amount paid is going to start to drop because 

we're going to start to forgive more loans as we get to 

the higher income levels as well. And in this case, 

actually, Miles ends up paying some interest only 

payments as well, because the income protection 

basically drops his payment per month, in some cases to 

below what is due for interest. So what I put on here is 

that at very high income levels, what you can see is 

that the percentage of gross income, right, we're 

keeping the discretionary income at 10% for these for 

these scenarios, the percentage of gross income ends up 
32 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

dropping to a pretty low level. Now, it's a value 

judgment about what's kind of too low or the appropriate 

amount of gross income, just want to point that out so 

that's something you guys can think about as you make 

your decisions. So now we can plot this Miles under the 

$45,000 a year income scenario, with this new chart. And 

as you can see, basically, at some level, we have an 

increasing amount paid, then we'll have this benefit 

through lower total amount paid. With the trade-off of 

potentially paying for a longer amount of time, paying 

more overtime or sorry the total amount will repay, but 

extending the repayment period. And as we get farther to 

the right on this graph, again, what we're gonna see is 

potentially making some interest only payments, and then 

we can put on a $55,000 a year scenario. And if we were 

to extend this out, you know, we could you know, every 

time we add on more money, we're basically going to have 

lines that go farther out and farther out. Daniel, I see 

your hand up, why don't we, if that's something I can 

answer quickly. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Yeah, thank you, Raj, 

so just a quick question. So I know in some income 

repayment plans, when your income reaches a certain 

level, if it's higher than the standard monthly payment, 

you actually could pay more monthly than the standard 
33 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

monthly payment for repayment as well. But in this case, 

when you're showing, I just want to make sure I'm clear 

is the overall cost or repayment costs, including 

interest. So have you modeled for us, so if at some 

point Miles is going to earn a sufficient amount where 

his income based repayment plan might, in fact, the 

calculated amount might be higher than the $300 

standard. Do you have an example where that is shown as 

well? 

MR. DAROLIA: Yeah, I was actually 

gonna get to that here just in a minute. But so that's 

exactly right. This goes to my sort of earlier caveat 

that you know, there is sort of an eligibility 

consideration that could be applied here, which I did it 

for kind of putting together these graphs and basically, 

for certain IDR plans, if your payments under the IDR 

exceeds that under the standard repayment plan, you're, 

basically not eligible for that. And as far as I think 

it's at least these two data points here for when it 

makes $55,000, if not more, I have some of the 

background I can look up here afterwards. But in this 

case, under the current sort of scenarios, Miles 

wouldn't actually be eligible for it. But again, I'm not 

modeling that specifically. And one of the reasons that 

you end up paying less actually as as incomes gets high, 
34 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

you know, if they were eligible, is because you're 

paying just a larger amount each month, and you end up 

paying for a shorter amount of time, right, and so 

because of that, you know, there are all these levers to 

pull. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Yeah and I guess and I 

go back to the question is that true of all IBR current 

plans, or IBR and ICR where you're not eligible, if your 

amount is, is higher than standard? 

MR. DAROLIA: So I don't have the 

document in front of me right now, I don't believe it's 

out for all of them, I would have to go back through and 

kind of look through. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Never mind, thank you, 

I'll hold that. 

MR. DAROLIA: So another way we can 

think about this is just the average monthly payment as 

a percent of gross income. And again, sort of the 

intuition of just want to try to convey here, is that, 

you know, when we talk about the percent of income, 

we're talking about percent of discretionary income as a 

policy lever that we can pull. And so some of these 

income protection levels-- what they're going to do is 

they're going to drive the sort of percent of gross 

income paid every month, down to a relatively pretty low 
35 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

level. Now, again, that's up to the committee to decide 

about what what is sort of the appropriate level that 

you consider, which just wanted to point this out so 

folks kind of have that sense. Alright, and so we can do 

a similar thing, I'm not going to go through this in 

detail but instead of on the X axis, for these doing the 

protection level, we can do the share of income. And so 

just showing again, somebody who, you know, kind of the 

relative marginal benefits, as we reduce the share of 

income which is assessed under potential policy levers. 

And again, for example, in this case, because this 

person with 15,000, their income protection level is 

always going to be higher than their income, they're 

never going to have a total amount paid, they're 

basically just going to have zero amounts. But there are 

benefits kind of for everybody else as you move right to 

left on these, I'm sorry, left to right. Alright, so the 

next thing I just wanted to go through was, was just 

some some basic thoughts on what you might think about 

as you think about changing income share, and or income 

protection. So we talked about last week, kind of both 

of these levers will reduce the amount, you know, that a 

borrower might pay on a month to month basis they can 

both do that. And again, one of the trade-offs with that 

is going to be about repayment, repayment lent, higher 
36 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

total amount paid. And as I showed just now, a higher 

levels of debt, this could also mean that payments do 

not cover interest. But there are some different 

differences that we might think about between raising 

income protection versus changing the income share. So 

although it's equal, raising income protection is going 

to could lead to a larger number of what we might call 

quote, unquote, zero payment borrowers. And that's 

because the income protection can be higher than income. 

Right. And as we showed in the last session, when income 

protection is higher than income, that basically means 

the discretionary income gets down to zero. So although 

it's equal, that's going to lead to a larger number of 

zero payment borrowers. But one of the things that, that 

I tried to convey just now, that as income protection 

increases to relatively high levels, especially relative 

to income, itself, the benefits, the marginal benefits 

are largely going to accrue to the higher income. And 

so, you know, what I'm just gonna mention here is 

encourage you to consider kind of the goals and design 

principles along two different dimensions. One is, are 

the goals to have what we might consider zero payments, 

like what we talked about where discretionary income is 

effectively zero, or affordable payments? And I know 

that's kind of a values judgment term right there. But 
37 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

that might be something to to consider as well, right. 

So are you're trying to get to zero payments or 

affordable payments. The second dimension you might want 

to consider regarding goals is re the kind of goals and 

the problems that you want to solve. Right. So if the 

goal is to provide relief to existing borrowers, then 

obviously revised repayment plans and some of these 

forgiveness options and other things you guys are 

talking about during these weeks (inaudible). But I'd 

like for you to also keep in mind is that there's a 

secondary goal or not secondary, but a second goal that 

you might want to think about as part of this and that's 

not just providing relief to existing borrowers, but 

also encouraging future students to be able to 

participate and succeed in higher education. And so, you 

know, I teach full sessions and classes on this and so 

I'm not going to go through it all today, but to 

encourage those types of things, the investments we're 

typically going to want to make are in other areas 

outside of student loans, such as lowering the price of 

college, increasing grants, and doing other things that 

facilitate, you know, access to and success in college. 

And so obviously, these are not mutually exclusive 

goals. But, you know, I encourage you to think about 

that, to the extent that there are limited resources, 
38 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

you know, thinking about where you would want to invest. 

And so, what I want to share next, then, is just how a 

way that I've been thinking about sort of changing 

potentially these levers in both the income assessment 

and the percent of the poverty. And maybe this is just 

for me, because because I'm a huge nerd, but like, if I 

think about this sort of similar to our tax system, this 

is actually somewhat beneficial. And so at least 

conceptually thinking about it. So we can actually think 

about the current IBR plan, as similar to sort of a 

marginal or progressive tax system. And effectively, we 

can think about it as for the first, you know, 150% of 

the poverty line of income for this person with a 

household before one, it's going to be about $19,000, 

the marginal assessment rate on that each dollar there 

is 0%. Right, and then once you exceed that 150%, you're 

going to jump up to a 10% marginal tax rate or 

assessment rate on this. So you know, for those of you 

who follow tax policy, these types of graphs are going 

to be pretty easy. So what we can then do is think about 

what happens to this graph, if we change some of these 

levels, right. So here, this is that 150% protection 

level, income protection level that I that I just 

showed, what we can say that is if we move to 200% of 

the poverty line protection level, again, holding 
39 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

everything else equal, what we see is we're shifting to 

the right, kind of who is covered, right, who basically 

have how much income is covered, or, you know, by just 

by the protection, right, we're kind of shifting that 

amount to the right. But then everybody up here is 

effectively unchanged. Again, we can kind of move this 

out, again, moving it to the right, so every time we 

kind of increase the income protection, you know, 

(inaudible), we're kind of shifting these out to the 

right. We can also think about the income share in a 

similar way, right, so this is going to be a 10% income 

share in this way. And in this case, we could lower it, 

and what we're doing is shifting things down. Right. So 

in this case, sort of everybody in this region is the 

same but in this region, there's a benefit of getting 

their income share shifted down from 10%, to seven and a 

half percent. And again, we can shift it down to five. 

And so how I conceptually can think about this is the 

income protection is basically shifting, you know, these 

these kind of tax schedules or these income assessment 

schedules on the on the X axis, and the income share is 

shifted on the Y axis. And so one of the things just, 

that is, I think, potentially an option for you is 

changing both of these at the same time, right, where 

you can shift both on the X axis and the Y axis. And we 
40 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

can think of this akin to our again, to kind of draw a 

corollary to our income tax system, progressive tax 

system. Where for certain levels of income, you're 

charged a rate, but that rate increases, that marginal 

rate increases as your income gets higher. Right. So in 

this case, that again, to kind of go back, this is our 

current scenario, where there's just kind of two levels 

here. In this next scenario, what you can see is you 

could basically put in some cliffs in here where, you 

know, for the first 150% somebody's taxes are assessed 

at 0% 150 to 300% of the poverty line assessments 5% and 

then it goes up to you know, the current 10% over 300%. 

And these are just examples here, and you could 

potentially you know, again get as gets sort of 

complicated as you want in this case, scenario two, 

you're shifting out the income protection out to 200%. 

And then, again, sort of this progressive tax schedule 

throughout the rest of the, the income distribution up 

until 300%. So just a bit of the conceptual benefits of 

this, you know, one of the reasons we have this in our 

income tax system, it should provide little to no 

incentive for somebody to have a higher income, right, 

because it's a marginal tax rate. And that also takes 

into account kind of both dimensions of vertical and 

horizontal equity. On the vertical equity being what I 
41 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

mentioned before the payment grows, the marginal 

assessment grows, his ability to pay grows, but there's 

still horizontal equity in people with similar income 

levels are assessed the same for that amount. And so 

because of that, another way that you might think about 

pulling some of these levers as you think about. So 

that's it that I have today, I have some additional 

figures and tables that you can look in there for 

yourself, and happy to answer any questions that you may 

have. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you so much, Raj. 

We'll turn to Michaela first. 

MS. MARTIN: It's kind of a question 

for Raj but overall talking a lot about monthly 

payments. But there hasn't been any conversation about 

what it would look like to shorten forgiveness time. 

That like folks with a zero or even very low balance 

will still end up with this on their credit and unable 

to seek economic mobility for 20 to 25 years. Like 

that's, and so I'm, I'm wondering how that that plays 

into this. And then I also just kind of begs the 

question, I guess is, why aren't we told what we're 

working with? Like, you know, we make mention of the 

cost and things but how can we make decisions on if we 

should shorten time or look at affordability when we 
42 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

don't know what that larger picture even is? It's like 

we're making mystery suggestions when it comes to IBR. 

MR. ROBERTS: Okay, Persis? 

MS. YU: So I think I mean, first of 

all, I think that Michaela raises really good points and 

I think that, you know, a couple pieces of data that we 

also don't seem to have is, what is affordable, right, 

like, that is a piece, what does it actually cost to 

live is a piece that I feel like is missing from what we 

have, and how does that vary by different population? 

But one of the more specific questions I have about the 

presentation is, as you're talking about the difference 

between somebody who makes below 150% of federal poverty 

and someone who makes above, I mean, certainly, and 

maybe I'm misunderstanding what it means to have the 

marginal rate and so maybe just to make sure that I'm 

understanding this correctly, right. Like a person who 

makes 150% over over the Federal Poverty Level is not 

paying 10% of their entire income, they are paying 10% 

of the amount that is over 150%. Right. So it doesn't 

like I like the cliff, I don't think see that as big of 

a cliff, right? So like you can make $1,000 over, you 

know, that you're not paying, you're now not paying like 

1000s more dollars a month, you're paying 10% of just 

that amount that is over 150%. So that I'm not sure if I 
43 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

understood the graph correctly. But I wanted to clarify 

that point. 

MR. DAROLIA: Your your interpretation 

is correct, right, it is a marginal, it is a marginal 

rate, there's a kind of a graph, at the end of your 

presentation in the supplementary additional figures 

that might get to it a little bit more in the way that 

you're thinking about it, which shows that yes it's not, 

it's gonna be an assessment above the income right above 

that amount. And so it's still a marginal rate, as I 

mentioned in that presentation, absolutely, and that 

graph kind of shows that it's not as if like, a bunch of 

people are just getting that applied to them and others 

are not, it's kind of everybody's first 150% of the 

poverty line income is kind of assessed at zero, and 

then there's a (inaudible). 

MR. ROBERTS: Bethany, go ahead. 

MS. LILLY: So related to both 

Michaela's and Persis's questions, it seems to me that 

if we're going to be making these decisions, we should 

be thinking about borrowers who may be likely to go into 

default or borrowers that you know, we I would like more 

information about the borrower population. But that 

being said, I want to just acknowledge we are on day 

four, we are almost out of time today and this is we're 
44 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

just starting on IDR which seems like we're giving it a 

good deal of short shrift. So just if we are going like 

for week three, I really think we should think about 

starting with IDR given we've given it short shrift , 

both of these weeks. But just registering that I think, 

you know, it's a lot easier to make these decisions 

about real people if we have information about those 

real people, and that would be helpful. 

MR. ROBERTS: Jennifer, do you want 

to, sorry, I saw your actual hand do you want to 

respond? 

MS. HONG: Yeah (inaudible) I was 

(inaudible) my hand for something else, thanks. 

MR. ROBERTS: Alright. Any other 

questions for Raj at this time? Oh, sorry. 

DR. DORIME-WILLIAMS: It's okay. So I 

just also want to, I guess, add to what Bethany shared. 

So I think it was easy. So first, thank you Raj, for 

your research. So it's really clear to sort of see from 

what you shared, right, sort of these really low 

earners, and maybe low mid earners and I think one of my 

questions or concerns are like, what does this look like 

for folks who are in the middle? And I know, middle 

looks different, depending on like region and all the 

things that we've talked about before. But when I think 
45 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

about how many of the folks gave comments, who aren't 

necessarily right in this, like, completely, right, 

they're about to default but in fact have been making 

payments for years. So there's some income, but there's 

still an issue. And so I think I don't want to ignore 

sort of this, we often ignore the middle. And so I don't 

know if there's maybe additional information that would 

be helpful and I do sort of understand what you shared, 

right, if we sort of increase this and what we see. And 

I guess maybe when we're thinking about maybe additional 

examples, that would be helpful as well, to kind of see 

how these payments end up either increasing over time, 

or borrowers sort of paying more, and I think Daniel 

made a comment in the chat about capping income. So it 

helps to have these examples and if we, you know, when 

we do come back to this, I think that would be helpful 

for me to see. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks, Marjorie, and 

I'm seeing the requests coming in in the chat. Daniel, 

why don't we go to you, and then prior to this anything 

else for Raj, we can turn it over to the Department for 

the first part of IDR. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Thank you. And maybe 

this comment is better served in the next portion but I 

think it's important because it speaks to the data Raj 
46 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

presented. I have a I have a paradigm question around 

the purpose of IDR, which is, is it to protect borrowers 

who are already in low income situations, or to protect 

a borrower who may find themselves at some point in an 

income situation, that's understandable, so, to make 

payments? So the reason I asked that is, you know, the 

period this all it feels like this all coexists in a 

world where we're talking about PSLF, or we're talking 

about loan forgiveness, for the period of time, you 

know, I'd love to see a world and maybe this is just not 

the paradigm, I'd love to see a world where a borrower 

could opt into IDR or IBR, even if their current income 

isn't qualifying them to make a lower payment with a 

protection in place that would allow them if they lose 

their job, if they don't get raises, if etc, etc, there 

is a protection for them in that timeframe and have 

those years of standard repayment qualified. So I think 

this is the problem is that we're we're somehow, you 

know, deconstructing the current situation of the 

borrower from the payment option they have. And whereas, 

in fact, really, it's the premises that IBR and ICRs 

protect the borrower, we should let borrowers opt into 

that from day one. So that if in the future, they have 

become risk or income volatility, they're protected, 

because they're in that payment plan. I guess, Raj this 
47 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

goes back to the question you raised about sort of where 

they come above and beyond and the one I was talking 

about in terms of the standard repayment cap, you know, 

I hate to see a borrower asked to pay more than the 

standard amount, but I'd still want them in there for 

protection purposes and for PSLF qualification, and for 

for cancellation qualification. So I don't know if 

that's just a paradigm difference, or, you know, that 

isn't in terms of what the Department is even envisioned 

for, for income based repayment plans. But it seems 

that, you know, that would be sort of a generalized one 

where we want everyone to choose that to help protect 

them for future exposure. 

MR. DAROLIA: So let me give a quick 

response, and I'll continue to collaborate on some of 

these issues. So I think these are all great questions. 

You know, I'm certainly happy to provide what I can on 

this. It sounds like a lot of the questions are not 

necessarily so what I try to be tried to think about a 

kind of a policy levers that were put in the issue 

document and what happens if you change some of them. It 

sounds like there's still some thirst for some 

information just even on kind of distribution and 

demographics of borrowers more broadly, I can try to 

certainly put that together What is not going to be 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

possible, at least with the data that I have, is 

something that kind of specifically links that to sort 

of different IDR plans or where they are in the, you 

know, I see Bethany put a comment in there about sort of 

where they are relative to certain income thresholds and 

things like that, that's going to be very difficult to 

do, you know, again, with public data. And so some of 

these things, I think, are great questions but I'm not 

sure if there they can be done even produced by the 

Department. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thanks Raj, Dixie. 

MS. SAMANIEGO: Yeah, Bethany just 

commented in the chat and it was something that I was 

gonna ask. Is there something that the Department could 

do to help Raj with that? I know that I've asked, I 

asked yesterday, and Raj got back to me and just said 

that, like their concerns with data sharing and stuff 

like that, while I understand, I think that this data 

request would be incredibly helpful for the negotiators, 

especially myself, trying to understand it, because 

we're just dealing with like, possible examples right. 

It would be helpful if that the that these data requests 

in the chat could be fulfilled in just like halfway 

fulfilled, at least. And so can the Department help with 

that? Is there a way for Raj and our advisors to get 
49 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

data that the Department has? Yeah. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, (inaudible) 

Bethany. Persis and then if you don't mind, I do want to 

turn it over to Jennifer so we do have some time to 

discuss this today. 

MS. YU: So I want to reiterate this 

point and I actually did make a data request after week 

one to this effect, asking for race data asking for 

breakdowns of borrowers in different repayment plans, to 

break it down by race, where possible, and and I think 

that I'd like to, I'd like us to expand our idea about 

what is possible. I understand that the Department of 

Education does not capture race data, when it when it 

gets its federal student loan data but there are other 

ways of approximating race. And candidly, I have 

(inaudible) this this particular question numerous years 

in a row. So the fact that Department doesn't currently 

have the data in time for this rulemaking doesn't really 

seem like a great explanation for why this data does not 

exist. I think that there are proxies that we can use in 

order to estimate what what the impact of the different 

different payment amounts are, you know, how many 

borrowers have your dollar payments? How long are they 

in $0 payments? Does that impact different race groups 

differently? We can do that by zip code, you can do that 
50 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

by, you know, approximations of last names, these are 

proxies that different agencies do use. And certainly I 

think the Department should be doing that analysis on a 

regular basis. And I think that we need that data in 

order to really be able to create reasonable rules based 

upon real life examples of how our student loan system 

is impacting borrowers, but especially borrowers of 

color. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you Persis. So at 

this time again, thank you, Raj, so much for that for 

that presentation. At this time, Jennifer, are you able 

am I able to turn it over to you to present the first 

section of IDR proposed reg text? 

MS. HONG: Yes, I'm happy to do that. 

Thank you, again to Raj, we did ask him specifically to 

talk about the income and income share and how it plays 

out. I think that really helps to inform this discussion 

as we go into it. As far as the data requests, we have 

received several. Given that this is a compressed 

timeframe that we're dealing with, we're trying to 

prioritize those requests. If we don't have those data, 

we, there's not we can't pull it at this time, if we 

simply don't have the data that's being requested. So we 

are reviewing those we are pulling them, and, you know, 

to the extent that they're available, we will provide 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

them, the same for these discussions at the table. I see 

some hands raised so I can 

MR. ROBERTS: I was going to say Dixie 

and Persis, Dixie, go ahead. 

MS. SAMANIEGO: Yeah, so I I just 

wanted an answer to what I asked yesterday and what I 

asked today, literally a while ago, 10 seconds ago, 

basically what data can the Department actually share 

with Raj so that he can better fulfill those requests 

because that's what I'm really confused on. And 

yesterday when Raj and I were chatting in the in our 

chat I understand that there are data sharing concerns--

very valid. But we also have to figure out a way that we 

can fulfill those data requests. Because some of the 

stuff that we're asking for that data does exist. And so 

I, for me, it would be incredibly helpful to helpful to 

figure out how is the Department is actually helping Raj 

fulfill those requests fulfill his entire duty as like 

an advisor to us so that's what I'm confused about. 

Because if the Department is not helping Raj with any 

data, then he's left with just public information. And 

we've seen that they were requesting data and it's not 

being fulfilled because there is not any public data, 

but also like, we're asking in specific data about the 

Department. Right, and some of the data the Department 
52 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

does to collect and so I want an answer to what the 

Department is doing to help Raj actually fulfill those 

data requests and Heather and other advisors as well. 

I'd really appreciate an answer before we move on. Thank 

you. 

MS. HONG: Thank you, Dixie. Well, 

first, we really value Raj's role here and he I think 

he's provided us with invaluable information throughout 

this session, and the session before so we would never 

want to feel like Raj was left in the lurch and we're 

asking him to fulfill these tasks without the proper 

support. So and he's delivered every time. So we will 

talk to Raj, we have been talking to Raj so to the 

extent that Raj needs information and data to kind of 

fill out some of this information. We are here to 

provide it, where we can't provide it, we will express 

that as well. 

MS. SAMANIEGO: I also want to make 

clear that I want my comments to be framed in a way that 

I don't appreciate Raj's input, I do appreciate his 

input, I appreciate his expertise, and Raj and I talked 

about it yesterday, so that's not what I'm trying to get 

at. What I'm trying to get at is that I think it's very 

clear that I think Raj may need more of more support 

from the Department. And he's been doing an amazing job 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

thus far. But I think that, and I don't want to speak 

for Raj, but for me as a negotiator, I would like the 

Department to support our advisors to the fullest of its 

capability and its capacity. I don't think that's just 

happening right now. And I don't want the conversation 

or the Department to frame what I've said and what other 

negotiators have said as we're not appreciative of Raj 

and Heather's time, because that is further from the 

truth. Raj's time, his expertise, and Heather's 

expertise has been incredibly helpful for someone like 

me, where I'm literally learning as I'm doing this and 

it's been incredibly helpful. So I don't want that to be 

the case. And I'm really thankful for both of them. But 

I also want the Department to help them as well, so that 

they can help us. 

MS. HONG: 100%. I think we're on the 

same page. I wasn't suggesting you were saying that at 

all. I think we're all very appreciative of the work 

that our advisors do and we've been, we're here to 

support them and giving them the information so that 

they can present it in a way that's informative for this 

committee. Thank you for your comment, Dixie. 

MR. ROBERTS: Right, thank you, 

everyone. So we have under half an hour left for wanting 

to invite members of the public in for the comment 
54 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

period. Now you have a lot of documents as a relates to 

IDR. So you should have, let me pull up my list, you 

should have not only the Department paper number 10 but 

I know the Persis and Josh sent out four documents and 

you shouldn't have one just now in your inbox as well as 

the two requests from Raj. And I think for this first 

section, we're just going to look at Sections A through 

D and on issue paper 10. So that's section A General 

through D which is loans eligible to be repaid under an 

IDR plan. 

MS. HONG: Yes, this is if we could 

queue that document. This is the proposed regulatory 

text or issue paper number 10 income driven repayment 

plans. There it is, thank you very much. I see 

Michaela's hand up perhaps we should get to her if she 

had something before I--

MR. ROBERTS: Michaela, do you want to 

say something before we before we dive into this? 

MS. MARTIN: Just super quick 

especially like since we're only a few minutes and like 

gearing up for tomorrow, if the Department had the 

opportunity or plans to look at Persis's a proposal and 

have a maybe a reaction to that? Because I think that 

that is a different construct than what we currently are 

looking at. And so that is up for consideration, I think 
55 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

that maybe we should address that a little bit. 

MS. HONG: Sure. I mean, we could, we 

can start with that. I could, I mean I can share back 

what we have, which is not a whole lot other than in 

terms of putting a borrower in default in one of these 

plans, we agree that yes, that is possible. But I think 

we need more information. in terms of you know, once 

they're in one of these plans, we know, at least for 

ICR, that they couldn't receive forgiveness. A defaulted 

borrower would not be able to receive forgiveness on an 

ICR plan. And I'm just wondering that the statute is 

pretty clear on that, and you know, our General 

Counsel's Office is prepared to speak on that. But I 

didn't know if there was something more there regarding 

your proposal from legal aid versus that. You can kind 

of flush out a little bit more and I'll stop there. 

MR. ROBERTS: Persis, yeah, go ahead. 

Sorry. 

MS. YU: Yeah, so I'm happy to speak 

to that. So certainly, I think, right, we have two 

different statutes that provide cancellation or provide 

income repayment. And so I think it's actually quite 

clear that the Income Based Repayment statute does allow 

for cancellation when for defaulted borrowers who are in 

there. I also think that there there is a reading of the 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

ICR statute that could possibly allow for defaulted 

borrowers. I recognize that there the provision in ICR 7 

(a) of that section says that it there's an including 

there's a list of payment plans that do qualify. And it 

says that, you know, will include time when a borrower 

is not in default, and pays under these various 

different places. But I, I read the word include, and I 

think Merriam Webster also restored include to say that 

when you include something, it's not an exhaustive list. 

So I think that there is actually space that one could 

provide cancellation to borrowers who are in default. 

But I think I mean, I think the the most important thing 

is to ensure that when borrowers are in default, that 

they are not paying hundreds or 1000s of dollars more 

than they would on an interest rate payment plan. I'd 

like those payments account for cancellation as well and 

I think that there's a legal avenue for them to account 

for in that way. But I think the most important thing is 

to ensure that we're not taking 1000s of dollars from 

borrowers who are expecting the Earned Income Tax Credit 

and the Child Tax Credit, you know, counting on it to 

pay back back rent and fix their car and get to work. So 

I mean, I think that there is both a question about the 

payment that is made and making sure that those are 

affordable for borrowers. But I do think that there is a 
57 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

legal path forward as well, on how we could get those 

borrowers time towards cancellation and ensure that 

they're not in a lifetime of debt. 

MR. ROBERTS: Unless the Department 

wants to respond to that point, specifically? Daniel, go 

ahead. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: This is just a blue 

pie, blue, blue sky, apple pie something like that 

question. Is it possible, I know there's been 

conversation about auto enrollment, is auto enrollment 

in IBR off the table? Is there anything in statute that 

would prohibit that? Brian's raised his hand. I think 

that's his. 

MR. ROBERTS: Yes, I see Brian, go 

ahead. You're muted right now Brian, sorry. 

MR. SIEGEL: I'll respond to both. 

First, in regard to Persis's comment, our reading of the 

statute is that payments made while borrowers are in 

default do not count towards the 25 years for 

forgiveness under the ICR plans. That's been the 

Department's consistent interpretation, since the ICR. 

statute was enacted back in 1993. We don't see a basis 

for changing that interpretation at this point. We 

understand that there could be a different reading, but 

we don't think it has enough support. We appreciate and 
58 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

certainly agree to your second point about, you know, 

the amount of of the payment that's being required from 

borrowers in default. Think there are other ways to 

address that and that's part of what's at the table now. 

In regard to Daniel's comment about automatic enrollment 

in an IDR plan. First of all, the statute gives the 

borrower the choice of repayment plans, at least a 

borrower who is not in default. Now, the statute does 

give the Department the authority to require a borrower 

who's in default, to repay under an ICR plan. The 

problem until recently is that and to some extent, it's 

still a problem. We can't put anybody into ICR without 

effectively their consent, because we need their income 

information. Now, we do have a process moving forward 

with the IRS as authorized by Congress to get that 

information. But we will still need borrower consent. 

It's not that we get that the IRS will give us the 

information just on our say so. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: Can I respond to that, 

Brian? Sorry, so so I mean, one option would be to 

redefine what is standard. So in a sense, the Department 

makes a choice by putting people on a standard repayment 

plan, borrowers don't have to choose the standard. That 

is, that is something that they're defaulted into lack 

of a better word, or pushed into. So one option would be 
59 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

to make the standard repayment an ICR and IBR process, 

once the Department ironed out the the access issue in 

terms of tax information. You know that that could be a 

way to address that concern. And again, I go back to the 

question of protecting borrowers, I think, you know, 

that that would generate the best protection for 

borrowers, on the front end. Borrowers could choose a 

different payment plan if they wanted to but I'm not 

interested in restricting borrower choice, but I am 

interested in nudging people into the payment plan 

that's going to be most beneficial for them long term. 

MR. SIEGEL: Well, and that's that's a 

legitimate point. I don't dispute that. I mean, I think 

there's some debate as to what is in the best interests 

of borrowers overall, whether to go into an income 

driven plan, or if they can repay in 10 years to get rid 

of the debt. I mean, that may depend on amounts, and it 

may depend on the borrower's individual situations, and 

the data shows, you know, there's a lot of differences 

differences among borrowers. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: And that's why I 

raised the question of an IBR that would allow a cap at 

the standard 10 year payment amount. So in a sense, if a 

borrower reached income threshold, that would be too 

high, they would make that standard payment anyway. So 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

just something for consideration. 

MR. ROBERTS: Persis, go ahead. 

MS. YU: Yeah, so I had a well, two 

things to say in response to both of those things. So 

first of all, to Daniel's point about automatically 

enrolling folks in IDR, I want it I'm going to put this 

in the chat right now. But new America actually 

published a blog post yesterday with with a proposal on 

how under the future act, we can get at least delinquent 

borrowers automatically enrolled into income during 

payment. And I know that as we're going through our 

proposed regulatory tax I think we'll come up towards 

the end as we're looking at the procedures. But I think 

that it's worth, I think it's worth consideration for 

folks to take a look at this new America proposal. And 

for (inaudible), getting there as a way to provide that 

consent necessary under the future act. So that we can 

actually get, we can do it through the master promissory 

note, we can do it at other points on when borrowers are 

interacting so that we can get that consent so we can 

enroll borrowers who have a demonstrated, you know, 

demonstrated financial hardship by not making payments, 

right and get them into income during payments. So I, I 

recommend that folks take a look at that. I suppose 

that's maybe my guess my fifth document or proposal that 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

I'm sending you all on income during payments. But the 

the other thing is to go back to Brian's point, he said 

that he thought that there were other ways that we could 

get to a payment amount of defaulted borrowers and that 

that's what's on the table now. And I was hoping that we 

could get a little bit more detail about what you meant 

by what we're talking about now and how that would cap 

the amount of payments that defaulted borrowers are 

required to make. 

MR. SIEGEL: I don't want to get into 

the details until Jennifer has a chance to go into more 

of the details of the plans that we put forward there. I 

think there's a lot of discussion still to be had on on 

the details of those programs and how they'll be 

available to defaulted borrowers and the Department's 

continuing to look at that and the options we provide 

to defaulted borrowers. Some of that might be on the 

table now, some of the you'll see before the third 

session. 

MR. ROBERTS: So I see Michaela, but 

then after that, it might be appropriate to transition 

to looking at the red text but go ahead, Michaela. 

MS. MARTIN: Sorry, I just have kind 

of another follow up just to be able to conceptualize 

and we go through a piece by piece, but, I think this 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

time forgiveness piece is really, really vital. Right 

now in here, it's, like 20 25 years, right? That's a 

lifetime of debt. And when you have folks that are going 

to have a zero payment for years and years and years, it 

also increases the odds that they're just going to stop 

refilling out that paper every year and end up in 

default, because what's the point, right? I'm going to 

owe this forever. For like, like in the criminal justice 

world, that's a literal life sentence. 20 to 25 years, 

like, people have kids to go to college and like, how 

are they going to pay for their kids to go to college 

while they're still paying her own student debt? Like, 

it's like, I'm hearing this constantly, y'all should 

stay off Reddit for student loans while you're doing 

this, because it's really, really triggering, like the 

stories that folks share. It's just like, you can't buy 

a house, how do you get an apartment? This is on like, 

even when you're low income, like you can't get housing. 

A lot of folks that are in the lowest, you know, these 

really low, low income earners didn't complete their 

degree, right. So they don't have a way out of this 

ever. So, and I'm honing in on this time to forgiveness, 

because I don't understand why we can't drastically 

lower it for the lowest of wage earners. Right? Like, 

have it be like, if you have a zero payment for seven 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

years, then it's forgiven? Like why do you have to wait 

25 years when you're ever going to get money out of 

them? Or like, what why is it 20 years? Why? Why can't 

it be 10 for folks on my IVR or under certain income? 

And if that is on the table, we have to prioritize 

monthly payments versus time to forgiveness, if we don't 

know where those pressure points are and what what you 

all have as far as like, what you all are willing to 

extend, then how can we have a real conversation about 

how we're weighing these value decisions? Like, because 

cool, you give somebody $20 off your bill for 25 years 

like I I'm really struggling with how we can look at 

this piece by piece without knowing what these pressure 

points are and what we can actually do here. 20 years is 

insane. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Michaela. I 

appreciate that comment. I do, I do want to give Jen the 

time to run through the document, though first, because 

I understand there are big questions. But I just want to 

give this the proper timing. I know we're only we're 

under 15 minutes out from public comments. So you can't 

really fully dive into this today. But if we just gave 

the Department the opportunity to tee that up for us. 

While that's getting pulled up, I do I do just want to 

remember we've had the first folks log in for public 
64 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

comment. But again, if you did receive a confirmation 

email to speak, please, if you wouldn't mind logging in 

early just for the folks on the livestream end of 

things. 

MS. HONG: Thank you, Brady and thank 

you Michaela for your comment. I think we're gonna get 

to that conversation as I introduce the proposed text we 

flagged by TK meaning to come. Those are areas that we 

want to discuss with you. So to the extent that you guys 

can frame your comments, in terms of priorities for your 

constituencies within the idea framework. So I 

understand Michaela that the years to forgiveness is 

something that you flagged and for Persis the defaulted 

borrowers, we've prefaced our response to Persis saying 

that we just simply haven't -- we can't do it where we 

feel like our legal analysis resulted in our reading. We 

can't do something. We're limited. We believe by our 

legal read, as Brian mentioned, there are still some 

policy issues that we're taking into consideration but 

certainly, the conversation regarding defaulted 

borrowers at the Department is ongoing. So to the extent 

that we can integrate this as we go through the proposed 

language, I do encourage you to do so. So this is in a 

new section 685.209 proposed text. There was a question 

earlier on, I think, after we provided this for 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

amendatory text, redline text, and just to clarify, in 

introducing the new income contingent repayment plan, we 

have taken the opportunity given from the understandable 

confusion regarding all the regulations and existing 

plans to redo the whole section, redo the whole section, 

rewrite everything, in terms of the existing plans, 

restructure that there's nothing substantively changing 

with regard to the existing plans. But in integrating 

our new proposed plan and language, we decided to revamp 

this whole section. So this is the amendatory tax to 

replace existing tax under 209. And just to recap for 

income driven repayment plans when we talk about income 

driven repayment plans it's the umbrella nomenclature 

for, for existing plans. And then the fifth, fifth one 

that we're proposing that you see there under five, and 

just reading them out loud, we have the Income 

Contingent Repayment Plan, Income Based Repayment Plan, 

Pay As You Earn, or Pay and Repay. We are proposing the 

Expanded Income Contingent Repayment plan or EICR that's 

how we're referencing it in this proposed document, we 

are amenable to that name as well and we're happy to 

take suggestions on what to call it, so please chime in 

on that. So again, TK right off the bat, other 

definitions that we feel are relevant to subpart B, 

currently, we have essential definitions regarding 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

partial financial hardship. And again, this is pulling 

in definitions. All of this is pertinent. It may not be 

pertinent to the proposed plan. The EICR is temporary--

calling it but it's in there because remember, we've 

collapsed all these plans into one section to simplify. 

Okay, so there's partial financial hardships, I think, 

to Daniel's question, this applies to IBR in terms of 

income requirements, eligible new borrower, what that 

means, and we've where we've embedded in the definition, 

is to what repayment plan it is applicable to. New 

borrower means for the purposes of IBR plan, for 

example, eligible loans for the purposes of preparation, 

discretionary income, we've talked about this a lot, 

again means for the ICR plan difference between the 

applicable total income determined in accordance with 

subsection E and L, and 100% of the applicable poverty 

guideline that's applicable for IBR, PAYE, REPAYE, and 

EICR which we're calling this proposed plan. Family size 

is there on page two, support poverty guideline, this 

is, these are all we've been talking about this so I 

won't get into it-- borrower eligibility and loans 

eligible to be repaid under an IDR plan. And I'll stop 

there to take any suggestions regarding definitions we 

may have left out. And also another thing we flagged is 

TK or to come is feedback on the types of loans here and 
67 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

consideration of how loan type eligibility interacts 

with cost and potentially other design parameters. So we 

haven't defined what loans are eligible to be repaid 

under an EICR plan. So we'd like to hear from you on 

that. Again, just to be clear, FFEL loans are not 

eligible under the statute for ICR plans. 

MR. ROBERTS: I'm already seeing some 

hands and knowing that we're coming up on the half hour, 

Jeri, go ahead. 

MS. O'BRYAN-LOSEE: Okay, just a 

suggestion for a definition and that would be 

consolidation. That confuses a lot of people, they 

consolidate many into one and it screws up interest 

rates. So the fact that consolidation could be moving 

one loan at a time, I think is important for people to 

understand. That's what I run into quite a bit is that 

consolidation term. 

MR. ROBERTS: Throughout this with all 

the solicitation, feel free to put any language that 

you're suggesting into chat, but Daniel, go ahead. 

MR. BARKOWITZ: So I'll be quick, but 

I would strongly urge that we move to one plan for FFEL, 

one plan for DL. And that in as much as we can, at this 

point, take the opportunity to try to eliminate 

confusion. And the way it sits right now, adding other 
68 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

plan is just going to I think multiply confusion rather 

than trying to simplify. So to the extent that we can, I 

would love to see us move to one plan, knowing that we 

can have a plan and I see our plan for FFEL loans and 

IBR plan for FFEL loans and an ICR plan for DL. That 

would be my suggestion. 

MR. ROBERTS: Persis, go ahead. 

MS. YU: Thank you and I unfortunately 

have a lot to say so we I may not cover it all in this 

part, I might have to get back to it in the morning. The 

first thing that I do want to say is I want as we're 

having these discussions to make sure that we're 

centering the voices of borrowers of color, it was a 

stated interest. When we when this was this rulemaking 

was noticed that borrowers of color were supposed to be 

front and center and I think we need to continue to do 

that. I, so Amanda Martinez from UnidosUS was speaking 

in the public comment period earlier and ran out of time 

and she ran out of time on income driven payment so I 

would like to read into her state the remainder of her 

statement. She said, lastly, the income driven payment 

plan intended to expand borrowers your payment options 

and support lower income borrowers in good standing on 

their loans is not reaching Latinos are providing 

substantial support support relief. Many Latino 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

borrowers do not enroll because they may not be aware of 

their options to enroll in income driven payment. Only 

18% of Latinos who entered and entered college in 2011 

to 2012 academic year began repayment within five years 

when enrolled in an income driven payment plan. While 

being enrolled in an IDR plan can provide an affordable 

payment option. It can lead to even higher debt over 

time for low income borrowers who do not get approved 

for forgiveness. And making improvements to IDR, 

UnidosUS recommends the committee and the Department 

prioritize higher income exemptions and shortening 

forgiveness timelines. As the Department considers 

issuing new regulations governing student loan 

cancellation programs and strengthens student borrower 

protections to ensure equitable outcomes for all 

students and student loan borrowers, the Latino 

experience in these programs should be considered in the 

redesign and discussion. I'd also like, I also hope that 

everyone has had the opportunity to read the recent 

report by Ed Trust and Professor Jalil Mustaffa titled 

Jim Crow Debt, how Black borrowers experience student 

loan debt, in particular finding on income driven 

payment that income driven payment feels like a lifetime 

debt sentence. And about the according to that report, 

how many of the borrowers that they surveyed many of the 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

Black borrowers that they surveyed and they surveyed 

over 1000 borrowers had said that they had a hard time 

being able to who were enrolled in income driven payment 

had a hard time affording to make a savings account, 

affording health care expenses, they had a hard time 

affording the rent, childcare and food. For Black 

borrowers, this is what they told me for Black borrowers 

IDR plans are not easing the student debt crisis 

indicator including sovereigns, and decreasing 

repayments, suggests that they may be exacerbating or 

prolonging it. Even default rates remain high despite 

the availability of these plans. This is part of the 

basis for the two proposals on both shortening the 

repayment period, as Michaela suggested, but also 

changing the definition of discretionary income 

threshold to 400% of poverty. And I will resume my 

comments after others have spoken. Thank you. 

MR. ROBERTS: I think actually we're 

gonna try to transition pretty quickly into public 

comment if it's okay with everyone but we'll pick up 

with this exact same section A through D tomorrow. I'm 

gonna begin our our Friday there. So with that, if 

you're ready to go, Kayla why don't you let in our first 

public commenter. 

MS. MACK: I've already admitted Mr. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

Joshua Queen representing himself. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon, Joshua. 

Can you hear me? 

MR. QUEEN: I can hear you. Can you 

hear me? 

MR. ROBERTS: I can hear-- you're 

coming in loud and clear. If you want to turn on your 

video, you're more than welcome to otherwise your three 

minutes starts when you begin. 

MR. QUEEN: Alright, I'll turn it on. 

I don't know how good this camera is right now and it's 

in a bad spot. Yeah, it's like under my screen a little 

bit, I'll try to focus on the camera. Alright, so I will 

begin let me just find my paperwork here. Alright, so 

I'm just gonna read my statement, and I'll begin now. So 

my name is Joshua Queen, I'm an Air Force veteran, and I 

grew up in a poor environment, trying to buy drugs and 

crime and a lot of shoddy people. Anyhow, never believe 

that I would be someone who would go to college. And I 

joined the military around the time I was 19 nor to 

provide for myself and my girlfriend at the time, 

shortly after we got married. It wasn't until I was 

around 25 that I realized higher education could be a 

part of my future. I did not have anyone around me to 

give me a guidance or advice about how that process 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

works. So I basically just decided to go to college and 

I was on my own on you know, how to do it and what the 

process is. I attended Westwood College Online between 

2005 and 2007. I was in their computer science program, 

it was actually a game software gaming, like it was a 

gaming degree basically where you would get into the 

gaming industry and be able to make video games that was 

the dream when I was younger. So I joined them for that. 

Oh, yeah, I chose Westwood College because I couldn't 

get the degree I wanted on base. On the base, they only 

have so many classes, they have a certain amount of 

colleges that that supply classes on base, and none of 

them work for computer science back then. So the Online 

Education looked very attractive to me and that's 

basically what what, how I ended up online going to 

online schools. Westwood convinced me that I needed to 

take out student loans in order to pursue my education. 

Recruiters claimed that my loans would be very easy to 

pay off and would be low interest. They did not explain 

the terms of my loans or introduce other methods to 

finance my education such as Pell grants and 

scholarships. Recruiters also created a false sense of 

urgency to get me to enroll, I was told that if I didn't 

enroll immediately, I would have to wait up to three 

months before I could try to enroll again. I believe 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

they still do that these for-profit online schools. 

Westwood featured advertisements claiming that they 

offer game developer degrees that help graduates find 

work in the gaming industry. After I enrolled, I 

discovered that Westwood did not actually offer game 

development degrees. When I applied for game development 

positions at companies my applications were rejected. 

Furthermore, Westwood claimed that teachers were 

industry experts who would help me get my foot in the 

door in the gaming industry. I discovered that the 

teachers were inexperienced and Westward, teachers 

provided teachers with templates to to use for each 

class teachers rarely deviated from this template and 

were unable to answer basic questions to the point that 

I did not usually reach out to them. Instead, I 

researched by schoolbooks and Google to get my answers 

because they were not very helpful. In addition, 

Westwood recruiters lied to me about transferability of 

my credits when I tried transferring my credits to 

Grantham University, only 10 out of 50 credits 

transferred. The school will be attending this year, 

we'll be accepting less than 10 of the 102 credits I 

have previously earned at Westwood. Thank you. Have a 

good day. 

MR. ROBERTS: You as well. Thank you. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

MS. MACK: Brady, I have just admitted 

representative Greg Murphy out of North Carolina's Third 

Congressional District. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon 

representative can you hear me? Looks like they might 

still be here. Oh, wait, we can hear someone. 

MR. MURPHY: Hey, there. 

MR. ROBERTS: Hi, your three minutes 

begins whenever you start speaking. 

MR. MURPHY: Fantastic. Thank you. 

This Congress Murphy, thank you for the opportunity to 

be with you. I'm Congressman Greg Murphy and I represent 

the Third District of North Carolina. I also serve as 

the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Higher 

Education on the Education and Labor Committee. There is 

a lot to be excited about within this Negotiated 

Rulemaking. The proposal to eliminate interest 

capitalization on student loans will help reduce the 

finance cost of borrowing for nearly every student. And 

as a parent with students, I think that this is a 

welcomed initiative. Yet at the same time, the 

Department has several contentious items on this agenda 

that I have serious concerns about and would like to 

address. I urge the Department to take a step back and 

consider the long term ramifications of some of these 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

proposed actions. The next president will most likely 

given the state of affairs in the country right now be a 

Republican president. And unless you want your 

regulatory work to be reversed, and you should please 

carefully consider making a more moderate approach that 

can actually last. The Department's proposal to change 

the evidentiary and reliance standards on the borrower 

defense claims is really misguided. Under the new 

proposal, students will not need to show that they 

relied on misrepresentations in order to have their 

loans forgiven. This creates a moral hazard for students 

who are who are not impacted at all will be able to put 

their hands up to have their loans forgiven when they 

truly should not be forgiven. The Department also plans 

to use uncorroborated borrower statements as evidence 

and its borrower defense applications. Approving claims 

without corroboration opens the door to fraud. I'm a 

physician and have had to deal with Medicare for 30 

years. Corroboration is needed there and it is it should 

be needed here. There is no mention that the 

Department's issue paper on how it plans to protect 

taxpayers and institution from fraudulent application. 

We must strike an appropriate balance between providing 

borrowers that have been defrauded with relief, while 

ensuring that institution and taxpayers are protected 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

from frivolous claims. Unfortunately, the Department's 

the department's proposal is anti-taxpayer, antiinstitution and honestly, anti-student. The Department 

should also look broadly at its entire higher education 

landscape, ensure that any new rules protect all 

students in all sectors. Singling singling out 

proprietary sector for harsher treatment is 

unnecessarily divisive, and most importantly, does not 

protect all students. fraud happens in all sectors. The 

Department does a disservice to students in the public 

and nonprofit sectors when it creates uneven rules and 

deprioritize deprioritize enforcement enforcement's in 

those sectors. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I 

hope you take these comments into your consideration. 

Thank you. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, 

Representative Murphy. Kayla, who do we have coming in 

next? 

MS. MACK: I have admitted Mr. (ph) 

Devan Renea representing himself (ph). 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon. Mr. 

Renea. Can you hear me? 

MS. RENEA: Yes. 

MR. ROBERTS: Your three minutes 

begins begins when you start speaking. So go ahead. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

MS. RENEA: Good afternoon. My name is 

Devon Renea. And I'm a three time graduate of Full Sail 

University. Having obtained my bachelor's in film in 

2012, my grad (inaudible) in education, Media Design and 

Technology in 2013, and an MFA in creative writing into 

2015. I also had the privilege to receive a traditional 

educational instruction from the four-year tutelage 

environment through my studies and experience that both 

Morgan State and Howard University having earned my AA 

in theater arts in 2010. Prior to my election to seek 

more of an expanded, customized, creative based 

coursework curriculum, which Full Sail not only offers 

to individuals interested in entertainment, but also has 

been a pioneer for over four decades. My journey after 

my graduation from Full Sail University, led me to the 

prestigious Television Academy in the internship 

program, wherever selected as a Production Management 

intern in the summer of 2013. From there I went on to 

land a job at Warner horizon television, within the 

corporate production office, and after years of 

navigating the entertainment industry, I earned a 

position as the assistant to the showrunner of the long 

running unscripted series, Queen Sugar, a show produced 

in conjunction within WHTV an OWN network by Academy 

Award nominated Ava DuVernay and co-executive producer, 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

Oprah Winfrey. I then landed a writer's assistant 

position on Freeform Network show entitled Famous in 

Love, and then went on to work later as the showrunner's 

assistant for the current series Stargirl created by 

former DC Comics CEO and Aquaman creator Geoff Johns. 

After years of hard work, loyalty and dedication, I was 

eventually promoted to create a development coordinator, 

working alongside my longtime boss and mentor, veteran 

executive producer Melissa Carter, where I assisted 

Carter in her overall deal by developing series content 

for both network and cable programming for WB TV. While 

in this role I successfully aided in selling two drama 

series, one of which resulted in a network bidding war 

and addition to my professional history my now eight 

years with the Warner Brothers family. I also resided as 

the board chair co-president of the Black employees of 

WB which allowed me to oversee employee engagement 

initiatives geared at strengthening diversity and 

inclusion all across Warner media. I've also devoted my 

time through mentorship at the WB youth mentoring 

program, HBCU, NLA internship program, and nonprofit 

Foster Youth Initiative kids and the spotlight. I most 

recently was the script coordinator and co-writer of two 

episodes of OWN's new law legal drama series Delilah, 

and I am currently on Iron Mike's Hulu limited series 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

starring Moonlight's Trevante Rhodes. The dictionary and 

definition in the dictionary the dictionary definition 

Full Sail is with reference to a vessel sailing with a 

strong favorable wind at full speed with sails all set. 

For a fight with the metaphor for vessel. We also should 

be analogous to the wind and live breathing proof` that 

with hard work. Okay, well, thank you so much for your 

time. 

MS. MACK: I have now admitted Sarah 

Chelkowski (ph). 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon. Can you 

hear me? 

MS. CHELKOWSKI: I can. Can you hear 

me? 

MR. ROBERTS: Yep, loud and clear. 

Your three minutes for public comment begins whenever 

you start speaking. 

MS. CHELKOWSKI: Good afternoon. My 

name is Sarah Chelkowski (ph). In October 2007, as PSLF 

became law, roughly 8000 Peace Corps volunteers were 

serving abroad in various health, community development, 

agricultural and education based capacities. I was one 

of those Peace Corps volunteers. From 2006 through 2008, 

I taught English to grades five through 11 In Ukraine. 

Despite having worked towards PSLF forgiveness since 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

2010, I was not aware until October 2021, that a portion 

of my Peace Corps service could have been creditable for 

PSLF. For years prior to PSLF volunteers were advised by 

Federal loan servicers and Peace Corps to defer their 

loans and this is exactly what I did. Given what we 

already know about the troubled and mismanaged PSLF 

program, it should surprise no one here that I was not 

notified by the DOE nor my Federal loan servicer of my 

potentially qualifying services I was actively serving 

overseas. And what became of those other 8000 

volunteers, not to mention the 1000s that followed us in 

service. I can quite confidently say that they were not 

counseled on their loan forgiveness options either. When 

my Peace Corps service ended in November 2008, I applied 

for the partial Perkins Loan Forgiveness available to 

volunteers. At no point did my loan servicer tell me 

about PSLF or the transition payment, nor did I come 

across any online materials as I was doing my 

application for Perkins forgiveness. Peace Corps service 

can be incredibly challenging. Volunteers struggle with 

internet access. Most volunteers rely on phones that 

require them to pay for each minute of talk time, some 

of us have lived without a critical utility like 

electricity or running water. Transportation is spotty 

illness and isolation are commonplace. We hands down do 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

not have the ability to deal with loan servicing 

companies will overseas. The recent limited waiver 

period announced by the DOE will be life changing for so 

many people, yet at the same time return Peace Corps 

volunteers have been very much overlooked. The waiver 

period fails to recognize the specific way in which 

volunteers have been disadvantaged. I have spoken with 

over 100 volunteers about their experiences. Our biggest 

concern is that over the years volunteers have been 

advised by loan servicers to simply defer their loans. 

Most volunteers were not counseled on PSLF options, and 

some were actually given misinformation by loan 

servicers that influenced them to inappropriately defer 

their loans despite being aware of and seeking PSLF 

forgiveness. These concerns began from 2007 to present 

the third goal of the Peace Corps to strengthen our 

understanding back home of the world and its people's. 

Return volunteers oftentimes spend their lives on this 

third goal, all while working in critical areas. I asked 

the DOE to provide us with relief retroactively, 

similarly to that of the active duty military members 

with deferred loans and make common sense changes to 

regulations for future volunteers. I thank you for your 

time. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you so much for 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

your public comment. 

MS. MACK: I have now admitted Jill 

Anderson. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon. Can you 

hear me? 

MS. ANDERSON: Yes. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great. Your three 

minutes for public comment begins whenever you start 

speaking. 

MS. ANDERSON: Thank you. My name is 

Jill Anderson, and I've worked in public service since 

2007. I currently am a director of emergency and crisis 

services at a community service board. I have three 

college degrees, one undergraduate and two master's 

degrees. I started my repayment of loans back in 2003 

after graduation with my undergraduate degree. In 2007, 

I began repayment with Sallie Mae on my graduate degree 

loans which were FFEL loans. I was aware of PSLF through 

my work, but Sallie Mae did not advise me that I needed 

to transfer consolidate my loans to FedLoan direct 

loans. I continue to pay Sallie Mae under the wrong 

payment plan with the wrong type until obtaining an 

additional master's degree in which those loans were 

direct loans. Upon graduation in 2013, when I went to 

consolidate all loans, I learned that none of my prior 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

payments from 2007 to 2013 counted for my public 

service, and essentially the clock restarted. I also had 

an administrative forbearance placed in my account that 

lost proximately six more months of payments. 

Additionally, with my new consolidation in the income 

driven plan, my interest rate became 6.8%. I can only 

obtain my payment information from FedLoan from 2014 to 

2021. So I did not have data from what I paid prior to 

that under my public service from Sallie Mae. But from 

2014 until today, I've paid $35,102 towards my student 

loan balance of $113,545. Not $1 has paid towards the 

principal in over seven years. I continue to pay during 

the COVID forbearance, which so far equals $9,403 which 

applied completely towards my interest. I still have 

$4,133 in interest outstanding before my principal would 

be impacted by my payments. I pay $470 a month, I cannot 

afford these payments. As I mentioned in the beginning, 

I'm a director at a large public mental health 

organization. I also am a single female solely 

responsible for my finances. I continue to pay my lines 

to bring the COVID forbearance as I was unsure if my job 

would be furloughed or position eliminated and I would 

lose my sense of forgiveness. I currently am at 88 

payments towards forgiveness. I'm unclear if the waiver 

will assist me in achieving forgiveness. I'm 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

consistently fearful that this program will fail me do 

the due to the misinformation and changes. I would 

advocate that this committee review interest rates 

applied to student loans for form. I would advocate for 

form to review the cost of living to apply to income 

driven plans as our payments are often well above the 

ability to live within our income. I would also advocate 

that after the waiver ends requirement to continue to 

work in public service after making 120 payments be 

permanently waived as a financial hardship for 

individuals to wait for the actual forgiveness occur as 

significant. Thank you for your time. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you for your 

comments, Ms. Anderson. 

MS. MACK: We are now admitting Noel 

Vest. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon. Can you 

hear me? 

DR. VEST: Yes, I can. 

MR. ROBERTS: Alright, Mr. Vest to 

have three minutes. 

DR. VEST: Hello, my name is Dr. Noel 

Vest and I'm a researcher at the Stanford University 

School of Medicine where I work to find solutions to the 

opioid epidemic and relatedly mass incarceration. I 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

would first like to thank the negotiated rulemaking 

committee for allowing me to provide this testimony. Now 

I'd like to speak directly to the efforts to restore 

Pell grants to incarcerated students. I am the proud 

product of a college in prison program since my release 

in from prison in 2009, I've utilized the Pell Grant to 

attain an associate's, bachelor's, master's degrees, and 

most recently a doctorate in Experimental Psychology. 

Today, I'm a postdoc at arguably one of the most 

foremost research institutions of higher education in 

the world. This journey has involved extreme sacrifice, 

hard work, and oftentimes high levels of discrimination 

related to housing, education, health care, and 

employment. I would like to take a moment to highlight 

something that Dr. Stanley Andrisse said on Monday 

during the prison education subcommittees presentation. 

Specifically, Dr. Andrisse spoke of the breakthrough 

students with incarceration histories that overcame 

structural and systemic barriers, to beat the odds to 

become lawyers, doctors and professors. I feel that this 

should be the norm and not the exception to the rule. I 

tell people often that I am not a unicorn or some type 

of statistical anomaly. I am what happens when resources 

are in place to accommodate and foster incarcerated 

student develop. Dr. Andrisse, Dr. McTier, and all the 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

many incredible incarcerated scholars that have gone on 

to careers in academia have done so because at one point 

we didn't take the advice of someone telling us we 

couldn't do it. We persevered when someone said graduate 

school, law school or medical school would be impossible 

for someone with a criminal background. We said no, it 

wouldn't. I urge the committee to revise the statute so 

that does not limit opportunity based on post release 

employability in a given occupation. It would be 

impossible for Prison Education counselor to provide 

accurate information based on the myriad of different 

state laws on occupational licensing, which I would 

point out change daily. I would argue that I'm a better 

addiction researcher because of my experiences in 

prison. Please don't exclude people from Pell funded 

programs based on stigmatized stigmatized expectations. 

Please allow students to utilize Pell to achieve their 

own dreams. Thank you. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you, Dr. Vest for 

your comment. 

MS. MACK: We've now admitted Douglas 

Roberts. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon, Mr. 

Roberts. Can you hear me? Hi Mr. Roberts, can you hear 

me? 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

DOUGLAS: Yes, I can. 

MR. ROBERTS: Great. You have three 

minutes for public comment beginning whenever you begin. 

DOUGLAS: Thank you. My name is 

Douglas Roberts. I'm a clinical psychologist working in 

a state psychiatric hospital where I provide mental 

health services to clients with little or no income. 

This coming January, I will have worked in public 

service for 10 years, still two years away for 

qualifying for forgiveness under the Public Service Loan 

Forgiveness Program. That's because five years ago my 

partner lost his job and our house income was cut by 

more than half. I was on an income based repayment plan 

at the time but because we were not married, his loss of 

income did not result in a lower payment for me. I 

called FedLoan Servicing to ask for help and I was told 

that I did not qualify for an economic hardship 

deferment. The only thing they offered me was a general 

forbearance, which they took because we were facing 

foreclosure and I needed to catch up. I did what I 

thought was the responsible thing to avoid default on my 

student loans. And because of that decision, I now have 

two additional years before I can qualify forgiveness, 

even though I continue to work in public service 

throughout my entire forbearance. And I want to be clear 
88 

Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

that I think that this committee is doing excellent 

work, listening to borrowers and proposing reforms that 

are going to result in real tangible help to people. The 

proposal to include periods of economic deferment to 

qualify for PSLF is wonderful, but I don't believe it 

goes far enough because most people who are experiencing 

temporary or unexpected financial hardship do not 

actually qualify for these deferments. Like me, so many 

borrowers are only offered a general forbearance. So I 

urge you to consider allowing some periods of general 

forbearance forbearance to qualify towards public 

service loan forgiveness, even if it is just for a 

limited number of months. At the very least, I wish I 

could ask FedLoan to remove that forbearance, and allow 

me to make some sort of retroactive lump sum payment for 

some of those months, based on what my income was at the 

time, so that I could get additional months to qualify 

towards PSLF, since I was still working in public 

service at the time of my forbearance. However, as of 

right now, they are not allowed to remove any 

forbearances that were requested by a borrower and they 

are not allowed to accept retroactive payments. I'm so 

grateful for public service loan forgiveness, because 

without it, I would never be able to get get out from 

under my debt. In preparation for my comments today, I 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

checked my payment history with FedLoan. And I found 

that since January of 2012, I have paid $35,465 in 

payments. And out of that amount $520 Is all that was 

applied to my principal, everything else was interest. I 

urge you to consider allowing periods of general 

forbearance to qualify for PSLF. So the borrowers like 

me who faced temporary hardships, but continued working 

in public service do not have to add months or even 

years to their forgiveness date, since it was the only 

option made available to us, aside from defaulting on 

our loans. Thank you very much. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you for your 

comment, Mr. Roberts. 

MS. MACK: I have now admitted Jalisa 

Powell. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon, Ms. 

Powell. Can you hear us? 

MS. POWELL: I can. 

MR. ROBERTS: We can hear you. You 

have three minutes for public comment. 

MS. POWELL: Thank you so much. Good 

afternoon. My name is Jalisa Powell, and I'm a student 

borrower who has worked in public service qualifying 

employment throughout my entire career. I appreciate the 

Department's efforts to improve the PSLF program moving 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

forward and hope that additional changes will be 

considered for those of us been navigating this program 

for many years. These are the things that I'm strongly 

asking to be considered for PSLF. Number one, cap all 

payments of 5% of discretionary income and allow for a 

cost of living factor in determining this figure. I live 

in the DC area where my mortgage and daycare expenses 

alone a lot for 50% of my monthly take home pay. The 

formula used to assess discretionary income has 

significant blind spots when determining what a borrower 

can actually afford. 15% of my income to student loans 

is significant when balanced with other expense 

considerations. Number two, consider allowing all years 

of qualifying employment for credit towards forgiveness, 

the amount of red tape misleading and often 

contradictory information, constant investigation, 

documentation and advocacy to ensure account accuracy is 

frankly unreasonable for the average borrower. For many 

of us, we were given awful advice by the same people who 

were supposed to help us navigate through the process, 

often setting us back many months if not years towards 

forgiveness, having the burden of proof beyond ours to 

prove that we were misled, all while working in public 

service feels like an unnecessary blow. What does proof 

even look like for the average person who's making a 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

call to get help? It's really hard to figure that out 

and navigate it. The original spirit of forgiveness was 

intended to support those of us who were dedicating our 

professional careers to public service, why have we 

created a system that requires borrowers to thread such 

a fine needle to get to the finish line. And finally, 

implement borrower protection for the upcoming loan 

servicer transfers. Allow any months it takes to 

complete the upcoming servicer transfers from FedLoan 

Servicing to the new designated PSLF servicer to count 

as qualifying months towards PSLF, similar to the 

forbearance during COVID. Having been with FedLoan 

Servicing for the entire duration of my time as a 

borrower, even this organization who has been primarily 

responsible for executing up until this point, does not 

understand the intricacies of this program. Ultimately, 

the fate of most borrowers ends up in the hands of the 

call representatives on any given day, at any given time 

and their interpretations. As a borrower, I'm sincerely 

worried about what the next few months hold in store for 

those of us who fight tooth and nail to make sure our 

accounts are being fairly inaccurately managed and 

credited with PSLF funds. I really appreciate the 

efforts being made here and thank you for your time 

today. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you Ms. Powell for 

your public comment. Who do we have next, Kayla? 

MS. MACK: I've now added Jenna Jones. 

MS. SABOUNEH: Good afternoon Ms. 

Jones. Can you hear us? Doesn't look like she's 

connected to audio yet. Do we want to let in our next 

speaker? And I can message her. 

MS. MACK: Yeah, this is our last 

logged in speaker today, Bomber Ferraro. 

MR. ROBERTS: Good afternoon, Mr. 

Ferraro. Can you hear me? Hi, Mr. Ferraro, can you hear 

me? 

MR. FERRARO: Yes, this is he, sorry 

about that. I just noticed that there was a, me calling 

for Wi Fi. 

MR. ROBERTS: No problem. You have 

three minutes for public comment. 

MR. FERRARO: Awesome. Can I go now 

you can hear me okay, everybody can hear me alright? 

MR. ROBERTS: Yeah. If you're 

comfortable, feel free to come on to video. 

MR. FERRARO: Okay, sorry about let me 

take my hat off here. I'm sitting in my kitchen here. 

Let me take off. You guys see me okay. Sorry. I'm in my 

kitchen. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

MR. ROBERTS: Not a problem. Yeah, go 

ahead, you have three minutes. 

MR. FERRARO: Okay, perfect. Okay, so, 

hi, guys, my name is Bomber Ferraro II and I work for 

the Federal government. I'd like to thank the committee 

for allowing me to speak today. Without delay, I'd like 

to advocate for myself and others who fall into a 

category who may be left out of consideration for the 

public loan forgiveness program. I also apologize if 

this was prior to that brought up previously, I don't 

get to attend all these sessions, unfortunately. So this 

could be redundant, but I'm gonna read it anyways. So 

upon review available documentation from the Department 

of Education website, there was a recent proposal 

created by Heather Jarvis. It was submitted for this 

November session. This specific proposal identifies 

certain conditions as it relates to qualifying payments 

to include both deferments and forbearance is being 

considered for satisfactory repayment statuses. This 

proposal would also include both mandatory and 

administrative forbearances. So as it relates to my 

situation, in 2012, I graduated with a master's degree 

with roughly $88,000 in student loan debt. So I 

proceeded to consolidate my loans I located employer who 

participate in the the Public Service Loan Forgiveness 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

Program. And I also entered into an IDR because salary 

was roughly 30 to $35,000 annually at the time. So 

initially, I was on the impression that my employer was 

a 501 C 3, who also participate in the program. However, 

they soon revealed that they would not complete my 

paperwork if as requested. Needless to say it was a 

pretty stressful situation. So a few options that I had 

I elected to move into a financial hardship forbearance, 

which was my huge was a huge mistake as it relates to 

the point I'm going to be getting to. So I I did this, 

so I can start planning for the future, without the loan 

forgiveness and to begin saving money for housing, 

vehicle etc., wherever I needed. For roughly three 

years, I was in the that specific forbearance status 

files attempting to secure my professional licensure so 

maybe one day I would be in a better position and be 

able to pay back my student loans and other bills, which 

I accumulated while I was in school. So 2015, after 

receiving my professional licensure, luckily, I was 

offered a career through the Federal government with a 

higher salary now I'm able to make qualifying payments 

towards public service, public service, loan 

forgiveness, and I was also able to get out of that 

hardship forbearance. Also, I was able to contact my 

prior employer to find out that they actually did 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

participate. So I was able to get roughly 18 payments 

towards credit. So unfortunately, as it appears now, I 

will not qualify or fall into a waiver category for this 

upcoming forgiveness waiver period. Where after the this 

program is updated, 30 seconds? Okay. Coming from the 

future from this committee. Frustratingly, I wish I had 

a crystal ball to go back into to rework my request for 

forbearance if I would have known that these changes 

could be coming, I would have went into a mandatory 

forbearance, which could've ultimately given me three 

years qualifying payments. So ultimately, I would like 

to consideration for maybe a grandfather clause to this 

proposal, or being added or adding financial hardship 

forbearances in general to any future language for 

qualifying payments were to work out a process where we 

may be considered for this upcoming waiver for 

forbearance. 

MR. ROBERTS: That is three minutes. 

MR. FERRARO: Okay, that's all I got. 

MR. ROBERTS: Thank you so much for 

your time Mr. Ferraro. 

MR. FERRARO: Yeah, appreciate it. 

Thank you. 

MR. ROBERTS: I believe that is that 

is our final commenter for the day. So I do want to 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

thank everyone who logs on to the public comment. We 

really appreciate you speaking to the committee and we 

will pick up with IDR sections A through D tomorrow. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

Appendix 

Department of Education 

Office of Postsecondary Education 

Zoom Chat Transcript 

Affordability and Student Loans Committee 

Session 2, Day 4, Afternoon, November 4, 2021 

DISCLAIMER: 

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from a 

recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate; 

in some cases, it is incomplete or inaccurate due to 

inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as 

an aid to understanding the proceedings at the meeting, but 

should not be treated as an authoritative record. 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

Donate to a college 

From Will (A) FFEL Agencies to Everyone: 

good point 

From Jessica (P), Proprietary Schools to Everyone: 

My alternate, Carol, is subbing in for me. 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Hi, John is subbing in for me! 

From Todd Davis - ED OGC to Everyone: 

Brian will be taking back over for ED OGC now. Thanks 

all. 

From Kayla - FMCS to Everyone: 

Thank you, Todd. 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

+1 on need for an enforcement mechanism 

From John S. Whitelaw (he/his) (A-Disability) to 

Everyone: 

+1 on enforcement. Critical to prevent abuse. 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

Modify what’s currently in (g) and (h) to say, “For 

purposes of these requirements, a borrower defense 

claim includes any instance in which any party in the 

litigation asserts that the underlying facts could be 

raised as a borrower defense claim.” 

Adopt a new sub-section (g): “While generally 

intended to serve the interests of the Department of 

Education and the public at large, the class action 

and pre-dispute arbitration agreement provisions of 

this section are specifically intended to benefit 

affected student borrowers. A school’s failure to 

adopt the required agreement provision or to send the 

required notice provision should not prevent a 

borrower from relying on that provision in a court of 

law to pursue remedies under applicable state and 

federal laws.” 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

I'm back in for the Disability seat 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 David 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

+1 David 

From Jeri (P) Student Borrower (she/her) to Everyone: 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

+ 1 David, esp. in situations that have occurred 

because of the pandemic. 

From David (P) - State hi ed agencies to Everyone: 

Josh - would you please put that citation in the chat? 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

20 USC 1094(27). It details the requirements for the 

listing of a school’s agreement with preferred 

lenders, and then cross-references sub-section (h) 

which requires the school to “comply with such other 

requirements as the Secretary may prescribe by 

regulation.” Critically, like the current regs now, 

the regs would have to be drafted in a way as to not 

invalidate any provision, but provide schools with the 

choice on whether to enforce or not. 

From Heather (P) Accrediting Agencies to Everyone: 

Michael is coming to the table for accrediting 

agencies. 

From Heather (P) Accrediting Agencies to Everyone: 

^ Please ignore. I'm at the table. 

From David (P) - State hi ed agencies to Everyone: 

Thank you, Josh. 

From David (P) - State hi ed agencies to Everyone: 

+1 Joe 

From Justin (P) Service Members and Veterans to 

Everyone: 

+1 Joe 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

+1 joe 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Joe 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

The situation with Corvias and the University of 

Georgia system and Howard university's housing issues 

is a good example of the need to understand who is 

responsible. 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/10/newdocuments-reveal-strained-relationship-between-usystem-ga-and-dorm-operator 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/his) to Everyone: 

Our current contract is silent on arbitration. Just 

reviewed it. 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

I am back in for the legal aid seat 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

Thanks to Marjorie for the link to the Inside Higher 

Ed article 

From Michale (A) Accreditation to Everyone: 

Daniel has a Walt Disney signature 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

NP 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

There is also a fascinating write up by a Howard 

graduate student about the company overall. 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/his) to Everyone: 

Marjorie, can you send it? 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wKQ9iXcJGk8sIjEUM_qNX 

7CLD-rK3jA2/view | She has given permission to 

publicly share. 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to 

Everyone: 

I am back for Dependent Students 

From Josh (A), Legal Aid (he/him) to Everyone: 

Just so it’s in the record, if a student files a 

lawsuit and a school violates its contract by trying 

to compel arbitration, that information would be 

public already even before it got to ED 

From Jessica Barry to Everyone: 

Thanks for the info, Josh. 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/his) to Everyone: 

Can I ask a quick question? 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

Only REPAYE lets you pay more than standard if your 

income goes up (it has a different approach to 

treating partial financial hardship) 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

if I remember right 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

I believe that is correct, Suzanne 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/his) to Everyone: 

I would be in favor of allowing individuals to choose 

an IBR and have their payment amount capped at the 

standard amount to protect the borrower in case of 

income loss or adjustment. Why force people into an 

IBR or ICR only when their payment amount is lower? 

This would allow them to have qualifying payments for 

PSLF as well. 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

Partial Financial Hardship (which is what Daniel is 

getting at regarding IDR payments less than standard 

10-year payments) is not required for a borrower to 

choose REPAYE or ICR currently. A PFH is required for 

both IBR plans and PAYE. 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

+1 michaela 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 to Michaela 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to 

Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Misty (P) Priv. Non-Profit to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Rachelle(A) 4 year public to Everyone: 

For REPAYE we wanted to remove the requirement for 

financial hardship to enter the plan as that was cited 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

often as a barrier. Allowing the payment to float 

higher than standard was to remove the incentive for 

high income earners to enroll or to let higher earners 

pay off more quickly if they choose to stay in the 

plan 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to 

Everyone: 

+1 Persis, regional poverty/understanding of poverty 

lines are different across the country 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

+ 1 Persis 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Bethany 

From Dixie (P) Dependent Students (ella/she) to 

Everyone: 

+1 Bethany 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

+1 bethany 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Sorry, should have said that, thank you! 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

We do appreciate the presentation 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

Agreed! 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

So, to provide a concrete data request that 

incorporates Marjorie’s request, which I agree with 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

Thanks Bethany. 

From Heather - PSLF Advisor to Everyone: 

Note also that borrowers may have to pay income tax on 

forgiven amounts (although COVID legislation exempts 

student loan forgiveness from taxation through 2025). 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

1) do we have a breakdown of borrower demographics 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

2) that details any particular risk moments (i.e. 

below a certain income are more likely to default) 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

3) and relatedly, do we a breakdowns of borrowers in 

default demographics 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Is this something the Department could do? 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

Thank you! 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

I do really appreciate it, Raj! 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

adding could we just get IDR data? 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

4) like who is in IDR right now, demographics 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

+ 1 Dixie!! 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Dixie 

From Bobby (P) Two Year Public Colleges to Everyone: 

It might help to frame up what is exactly up for 

negotiation as we review the proposed text. 

Specifically discretionary income percentage as well 

as percentage above poverty line. 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

We also asked data on gender 

From Michaela (P) Ind. Students to Everyone: 

Family size or dependents 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela on family size + dependent data 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

+1 Michaela 

From Raj - Advisor Econ/Higher Ed/Data to Everyone: 

Just to follow up -- I encourage you to look at the 

Pew Letter I sent along with the presentation. That 

has scenarios with dependents and other moments from 

historical distributions 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

+ 1 Dixie 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Dixie 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

+ 1 Persis 

From Carol (A) Proprietary Institutions to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From David (P) - State hi ed agencies to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

The Department sets the default 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

and IDR should be the default 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

Dr. Turner's summary speaks to this. 

From Bobby (P) Two Year Public Colleges to Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

""Evidence from a lab experiment that presented 

students with different versions of the existing 

Student Loan Exit Counseling website suggests that 

many borrowers who would likely benefit from IDR are 

“defaulted” into the standard 10-year repayment plan 

because they do not make an active choice when 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

entering repayment" 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

+1 Daniel 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

https://www.newamerica.org/educationpolicy/edcentral/the-department-of-education-canprotect-borrowers-at-risk-of-defaulting-on-theirstudent-loans/ 

From Bobby (P) Two Year Public Colleges to Everyone: 

+1 Michaela... What are we willing to expand (reduce) 

From Greg, A - Dependent to Everyone: 

Thank you for that, Michaela!! 

From Michaela (P) Ind. Students to Everyone: 

Thank you. I'm sorry. I am in serious debt for the 

dream of getting an education, getting off gov 

assistance and out of poverty.. This can be really 

overwhelming 

From Jen (she/her): (A) Student Borrower to Everyone: 

@ Jennifer, can we know what policy issues so that we 

can better understand 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

I propose we call it Affordable Budget Conscious 

Repayment Plan or the ABC plan 

From Suzanne Martindale (A) state regulators to 

Everyone: 

Could we get data from ED on the # of borrowers in 

each current IDR plan, plus avg 

repayment/delinquency/default rates for each? 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

From Michaela (P) Ind. Students to Everyone: 

+1 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Marjorie (P), Four Yr Publics (she/her) to 

Everyone: 

+1 

From Jeri (P) Student Borrower (she/her) to Everyone: 

Making consolidation a separate definition because it 

doesn't mean moving many into on (a) can move one loan 

at a time because of interest rate differences (b) if 

people only have one loan they think that 

consolidation is something they cannot do. 

From David (P) - State hi ed agencies to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Jeri (P) Student Borrower (she/her) to Everyone: 

+1 Persis 

From Persis (P), Legal Aid (she/her) to Everyone: 

Here is the link to the ED Trust report titled Jim 

Crow Debt: https://edtrust.org/resource/jim-crow-debt/ 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

We have allegations in our WW complaint that 

corroborate Joshua's story RE time pressure. 

From Joe; P, State AGs to Everyone: 

We also have allegations that back up Joshua's claims 

on transferability of credits. 

From Stanley Andrisse to Everyone: 
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Committee Meetings - 11/04/21 

+1000 Dr. Vest 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Mr. Roberts 

From Bethany (P) Disability (she/hers) to Everyone: 

+1 Ms. Powell 

From Jeri (P) Student Borrower (she/her) to Everyone: 

+111111 

From Daniel (P) - Fin Aid Admin (he/his) to Everyone: 

+1 Ms. Powell (as a fellow FedLoanServicer customer) 

From John S. Whitelaw (he/his) (A-Disability) to 

Everyone: 

Compelling heart rending testimony today