From a letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren to the Inspector Generals at the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration (footnotes omitted):
I write to request that you inspect and examine whether the Department of Education ("the Department" or ED) violated its information exchange agreements with the U.S. Social Security Administration ("SSA") in order to establish a scheme to limit relief to thousands defrauded borrowers under its Borrower Defense for Repayment ("Borrower Defense") authority.
On December 20th, 2017, the Department announced a new plan and formula to limit debt relief to former Corinthian College students and other defrauded student borrowers by comparing their average earnings to students who graduated from similar vocational programs of study.
The Department stated in its press release that, "[s]tudents whose earnings are at 50 percent or more of their [Gainful Employement] program peers will receive proportionally tiered relief to compensate for the difference and make them whole." It appears the Department plans to use federal earnings data produced from federal tax records to calculate partial relief for defrauded student borrowers. The Department obtained these federal earnings data through an information exchange agreement between the Department and SSA for aggregate earnings data.
I have a number of concerns with this plan, including whether it is allowed under the current information exchange agreement between the Department and SSA. On December 20th, 2017, The Washington Post reported that SSA provided an "unofficial, non-legal, staff-level" opinion that SSA staff"do[es] not believe (the Education Department] would be authorized to use earnings information [SSA] provide[s] under any current agreement to make decisions about whether or not to grant debt relief to borrowers in certain vocations. "
I am troubled by the Department's potential misuse of federal earnings data acquired from SSA through an information exchange agreement in order to limit loan relief for defrauded students....
1 comment:
As someone who used to work closely with the privacy staff at SSA in actually making these kinds of decisions, this is an example of the fact that government and laws are complicated. Laws limit and constrain and are expected to be complied with. We were expected to obey the law. If the folks as Education want wage data, they avoided the IRS because the laws governing them are even stricter, so look for an end around using SSA's data. Surprise, the IRS rules on such use flow down to SSA as well. Warren is dead right to challenge this attempt because it appears to be in violation of the law and regs governing release of data at IRS and at SSA.
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