Trump once again tries to force his extreme political views on the American people—weaponizing federal government and holding resources owed to hardworking Americans hostage
Washington, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), issued the following statement on the Executive Order that President Trump today signaled he would soon sign denying student loan forgiveness under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program to public servants who have worked in fields the president disagrees with.
“The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program helps public servants—including teachers, firefighters, and so many others—get promised relief so they can save up for a first home and put food on the table for their families. This critical program has helped over a million public servants since it was created nearly two decades ago.
“Trump broke PSLF during his first term so that it was functionally nonexistent, and now President Trump is once again trying to use his office to force his extreme political views on the American people by choking off promised relief for people who’ve served our country in ways he disagrees with. Trump is robbing Americans of the promised student debt relief they are owed under law while he demands trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like himself. It’s as outrageous as it is un-American.”
As a senior member and former chair of the HELP Committee, Senator Murray has helped lead the charge to make the student loan system work better for students and families and lower the cost of college. She has fought to fix the PSLF program so that it works for borrowers and actually gets relief to public servants who have earned it. The program was created in 2007 under President Bush. Under Trump’s first administration, nearly 99% of all applications for PSLF were rejected—denying borrowers relief they were entitled to. At the end of the first Trump Administration, only 7,000 borrowers had received student loan debt relief through PSLF. Senator Murray urged the Biden-Harris administration to take a series of steps to fix the broken student loan system—including by fixing the issues with PSLF that were public servants relief. Murray worked closely with the Biden-Harris Administration to fix these implementation problems and during the Biden-Harris Administration, over one million student loan borrowers have had their loan balances forgiven through PSLF.
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