Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Indiana) Breitbart News Saturday He spoke about the Department of Education’s delay in filing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and how it was “another example” of “failures by the Biden-Harris Administration.”
Houchin explained that the FAFSA form allows students and their families to “know how much federal student aid they are eligible for” as they decide which college to attend.
The Department of Education recently announced that the complete FAFSA form won’t be available until December 1st, and will only be released to “limited students and institutions” in October to “resolve issues.” According to of The New York Times.
“This is just another example of failure from the Biden-Harris Administration. Every single federal agency is to blame – the border, the FBI, the Department of Education, inflation – everything under their watch has been a complete failure and this Department of Education FAFSA issue is no exception,” Houchin explained.
“They had four years. Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act four years ago, before I took office, and they had four years to simplify the form. Last year was a complete failure. We had students in July who still couldn’t access the forms to find out what aid they were eligible for for college. Instead, the administration has spent all its time on an illegal student loan relief scheme, a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the liberal elite. This is just another example of their failure, and we’re trying to introduce legislation that will actually hold them accountable,” Houchin added.
When asked by host Matthew Boyle what the FAFSA Deadline Act would do and how it would “curb” government failure, Houchin explained that the FAFSA Deadline Act would “provide some accountability and some guidance” to the process and bring “transparency” to the American people.
July, Houchin Introduced The FAFSA Deadline Act aims to “expedite the FAFSA application processing cycle.”
“When the simplification bill was passed, there was no deadline set. Oct. 1 was, in a way, the proposed reference date. I know last year they missed Oct. 1. They said they’d have it by Dec. 1 and they didn’t make it. They said they’d have it by Jan. 1 and they didn’t make it. It was a complete disaster. And like my family, I have two family members that are in college, so when you have to deal with a situation like this, you had total inaccessibility. And then when they finally did have access, it came back with information that was not accurate information, it suggested that students were either eligible for more aid than they qualified for or less aid than they qualified for. So the FAFSA deadline law says you have to have the form ready by Oct. 1 and if you can’t have it ready by Oct. 1, you have to work with Congress. You have to give them notice by Sept. 1 to make the form available,” Hawchin said.
“The FAFSA Deadline Act is an attempt to impose accountability, guidance, and require testimony before Congress on why deadlines can’t be met, so there’s transparency for the American people about what’s going on at the Department of Education and families can plan for the future,” Houchin explained.
“18 million households across the nation have to fill out the FAFSA. In some states, like Indiana, it’s required by law. They have to fill out the FAFSA, but until now they didn’t have access to it. The FAFSA is supposed to let students know if they’re eligible for federal student aid – it helps them determine what colleges they can attend. So if there’s no determination from the federal government whether they’re eligible, even when it was implemented last year, some students received notices that said they might be receiving more than they were entitled to due to misreporting on the part of the DOE, but that turned out to be incorrect, or conversely, they ended up receiving less,” Houchin added.
