As MAGA House Republicans Push for Government Shutdown, Committee GOP Advances Partisan Messaging Bills
Committee Republicans Vote to Strip Support for Student Loan Borrowers, Inject Partisan Politics in Investment Decisions for Retirement Savers
WASHINGTON – Today, Committee Republicans advanced a set of bills—including H.J. Res 88, H.R. 5339, H.R. 5337, and H.R. 5340—that would eliminate the most affordable student loan repayment plan ever offered to borrowers and allow extreme MAGA Republicans, instead of financial experts, to make important investment decisions on behalf of retirement savers.
“By this point in the last Congress, Congressional Democrats had already passed the American Rescue Plan Act—which delivered the largest, one-time federal investment in K-12 education in U.S. history and solved the multiemployer pension fund, saving over a million pensions and tens of thousands of businesses who were legally obligated to pay into those failing plans until the businesses went broke. We’d also advanced the bipartisan infrastructure bill to help rebuild America’s roads, bridges, public transits, and other infrastructure, while also creating millions of jobs. And we’d passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which strengthened America’s supply chains and revitalized the manufacturing industry,” said Ranking Member Scott. “But we haven’t done anything approaching that kind of record in this Congress.”
H.J. Res. 88 would repeal the Biden administration’s new Saving on A Valuable Education (SAVE) income-driven repayment (IDR) plan—the most affordable student loan repayment plan in our nation’s history—and undermine the economic security of millions of student borrowers.
The SAVE plan will allow more than one million low-income borrowers to make $0 payments and allow all other borrowers to save more than $1,000 a year on their payments, compared to other IDR plans. Moreover, enrolled borrowers’ balances will not grow due to unpaid interest.
More than 4 million student loan borrowers have already enrolled in SAVE plans and will see significant reductions in their student loan bills moving forward.
“If enacted, H.J. Res. 88 would prevent the Biden Administration from implementing this plan, sending the student loan system into disarray and further forcing many borrowers into loan delinquency or default,” said Ranking Member Scott.
H.R. 5339, H.R. 5337, and H.R. 5340 would undermine popular regulations that permit retirement plan fiduciaries to consider environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors when making investment decisions on behalf of retirement savers. These ESG factors enable workers to be informed about potential risks and opportunities when evaluating an investment portfolio. Retirement fiduciaries—not politicians—are best positioned and bound by law to serve retirement savers’ interests.
“H.R. 5339, the RETIRE Act, H.R. 5337, the Retirement Proxy Protection Act, and H.R. 5340, the Providing Complete Information to Retirement Investors Act—these bills inject partisan politics into workers’ investment decisions for retirement,” said Ranking Member Scott. “These bills are premised on the Republicans’ mistaken view that they know best when it comes to ESG investing, while Committee Democrats continue to trust the professionals who are legally bound to make prudent decisions on behalf of retirement plan participants.”
Watch the full markup here.
Read Ranking Member Scott’s opening statement here.
Read Democratic amendments and letters of opposition for the markup here.
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