Elizabeth Warren: Trump's Student-Loan Watchdog Pick Is 'Revolving Door Corruption'
WASHINGTON Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) blasted the chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for appointing a high-ranking official from a scandal-plagued loan servicer to be the Bureaus new student-loan watchdog.
On Monday, Warrens office released three fiery letters the senator had sent to Trump-nominated CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and Robert Cameron, the man picked to serve as the CFPBs new student-loan ombudsman. The ombudsman position was created to give student borrowers an outlet for filing complaints about their private lenders and getting help to resolve their disputes. The ombudsman is also charged with compiling and analyzing data about the student-loan market and offering advice to the CFPB, Treasury secretary, and Congress about how to improve that market.
There is nearly $1.6 trillion in outstanding student-loan debt held by close to 45 million Americans. Economists say the burden of that debt can be crushing, hampering young people from getting married, saving for retirement, and starting a small business. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified last year that student debt could be long-term drag on the U.S. economy. Tackling the student-debt crisis has become a hotly contested issue in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, with Warren proposing to eliminate nearly all student debt (and fully all of it for lower-income borrowers) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calling for complete student-debt forgiveness.
An uproar ensued when Kraninger announced on August 16 that she had filled the Bureaus vacant student-loan ombudsman position with Cameron, whose previous job included overseeing compliance activities at a student-loan organization that has faced thousands of complaints and multiple lawsuits called the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA). Seth Frotman, the previous ombudsman who was appointed under President Obama, called Camerons appointment an insult to the nations 45 million borrowers who deserve an advocate in their corner.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elizabeth-warren-student-loan-corruption-trump-cfpb-876315/