Mark Brown has headed the coed mortgage program on the Department of Education below Betsy DeVos. He was liable for the outrageous caper by which the division seized $2.2 billion in tax refunds owed to 1,000,000 scholar debtors, in direct violation of the CARES Act. On his watch, DOE tolerated garnishment of wages of scholar debtors, additionally expressly barred by the CARES Act.
A federal decide held Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in contempt for permitting each practices, regardless of a court docket order to stop and desist. As the official in cost, Brown stated the company took “full responsibility” for the difficulty.
“One of the many things Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has charged me with is delivering exceptional customer service to our more than 42 million federal student-loan borrowers,” Brown stated in a DOE video. “I’m here today to discuss an instance in which we did not meet our own standards.”
The Washington Post not too long ago reported that below Brown and DeVos, the Education Department is disproportionately auditing monetary assist functions of Black and Latino college students, a surge that started after DeVos took workplace. Brown has functioned as DeVos’s DeVos.
Soon, President Biden will resolve how a lot scholar debt aid to present, and the way to restructure this system to make it much less punitive. He will want somebody supportive of his reform agenda. That’s not Mark Brown.
Granted, there are a number of different Trump holdovers within the new administration’s early-replacement roster. Brown must be moved up on the checklist.
February 10, 2021
3:00 PM
