During Wednesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned military experts about their knowledge of scams that target student relief for service members.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So when Congress passed the GI Bill in 1944, a grateful
00:06nation promised to help service members with the cost of their education. This
00:11was a thank you for their sacrifices to our country. The promise is not charity.
00:17It is an ironclad commitment and it is key to how we recruit and maintain a
00:22fighting force. Survey after survey has demonstrated how important this promise
00:28is both to recruitment and to retention. And I see you're nodding along with this.
00:33Too often, however, the federal government has failed to live up to our promise, not
00:39delivering on the student debt relief that service members are entitled to or
00:44leaving them vulnerable to predatory lenders. For example, after student loan
00:51repayments restarted after the pandemic, the CFPB found that service member
00:57complaints about student loan servicers went up thanks to hours long hold times
01:04and other customer service failures with their the the companies that were
01:10managing their loans. Meanwhile, the VA has warned about the rise of scams where
01:17predatory schools will promise, quote, immediate student debt cancellation that
01:23doesn't really exist in order to lure veterans into enrolling. So again, I'd like to go
01:29down the line if we can with our witnesses for this question. Just yes or no. Does it
01:35undermine our ability to recruit and retain personnel? When we let bad actors scam our
01:42service members out of the educational benefits that they have earned and been
01:48promised by the United States government. Lieutenant General Eifler, if I could
01:53start with you? Yes, ranking member. And Vice Admiral Cheeseman? Senator, yes ma'am,
01:59absolutely. And Lieutenant General Borg-Shilt? Yes ma'am, absolutely. No, our Marines
02:04should not be scammed. Yeah. And Lieutenant General Miller? Yes ma'am. And Ms. Kelly? Yes ma'am,
02:09absolutely. Well that is the reason that I have proposed language for this year's
02:14NDAA to protect service members from predatory actors. This committee has
02:20worked in a bipartisan fashion before to ensure that service members get the
02:26educational benefits that they have earned. Under a bipartisan law signed by
02:31President George W. Bush back in 2007, the federal government will cancel the
02:37student loans of people who work in public service and faithfully pay their loans
02:42for at least a decade as a way to honor their public service. And last year, Senators
02:49Cortez Masto and Senator Moran led a successful effort to require DOD and the
02:56Education Department to perform a data match so that all eligible service members
03:03automatically receive the public service loan forgiveness that the law says that
03:08they have earned. So once again, I want to go down the line with our witnesses. Is it
03:13important that DOD do everything it can to deliver debt cancellation under the
03:19Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to all eligible service members as
03:24statutorily required by Congress? Lieutenant General Eifler? Yes, Ranking Member. Vice
03:31Admiral Cheeseman? Yes ma'am. Lieutenant General Borg-Shilt? Yes ma'am. Lieutenant General Miller? Yes, Senator Warren. And Ms. Kelly?
03:37And Ms. Kelly? Yes ma'am, absolutely. Okay, good. We're in a good place. Once again though, this is work that remains unfinished. So I have submitted an NDAA proposal for this year requiring DOD to provide quarterly updates
03:53until the Public Service Loan Forgiveness data match is implemented and also requiring the GAO to analyze the challenges
04:03that service members face with student loan debt repayment. I have also submitted a
04:09proposal to require DOD implement the same risk-based surveys that the VA is already
04:17statutorily required to use to monitor fraud and waste and abuse at schools that
04:25receive more than six hundred million dollars in service member tuition assistance each year.
04:32These are programs that matter to our service members and I appreciate having all of you as allies
04:38to make sure that our service members get what the American people promise them. So thank you very much
04:44and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for letting me do this. Thank you, Senator Warren.