Secret and 'Illegal' Trump Plan to Spin Off Federal Student Aid Office Sparks Outrage

The Trump administration is reportedly planning to remove the Federal Student Aid office from the Department of Education and establish a new independent agency tasked with managing roughly $1.6 trillion in debt owed by more than 40 million borrowers.

The plan, first reported by The Washington Sun on Thursday, comes as President Donald Trump works to illegally dismantle the Education Department without congressional authorization and assails student aid programs. Legally spinning off the Federal Student Aid office—the largest segment of the Education Department—would require an act of Congress, something that administration officials have "acknowledged internally," according to the Sun.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, expressed outrage over the administration's reported plan, noting that the Trump administration has already gutted the student aid office's staff.

"Tens of millions of Americans are depending on government to actually work here," Murray said in a statement. "This intentional sabotage only threatens to create true financial chaos in people’s lives."

“Every family filling out the FAFSA, every student counting on a Pell Grant, and every borrower trying to make a student loan payment will pay for Trump’s idiotic obsession with abolishing the Department of Education," Murray added. "Americans do not support abolishing the Department of Education—they just want a financial aid system that works. I will keep fighting to block this illegal move every way I can, and it is past time for Republicans to join Democrats and put an end to this nonsense.”

The Sun's reporting marks the latest evidence that the Trump administration is working to follow through on the president's campaign promise to abolish the Department of Education, which is currently led by billionaire Linda McMahon. Over the summer, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump administration placed the department's work defending civil rights and students with disabilities under the authority of other federal agencies.

According to the Sun, Education Department officials are privately "concerned that the Trump administration is rushing" the Federal Student Aid spinoff "without considering the consequences to families and colleges around the country."

"The department’s senior leaders have told staff that student financial aid can be managed more effectively as an independent agency, but current and former officials said the department is taking a chaotic approach that is setting it up for failure," the Sun reported. "Details of the latest potential offloading remain scant, said one official involved in the planning."

The unnamed official told the outlet that the office "does not know how to be independent" because it depends on the Education Department for many of its functions.

Mike Pierce, executive director of the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, said in a statement Thursday that "the secret plan to eject FSA from the Education Department shows, yet again, that McMahon and Trump care more about pandering to their anti-government base than keeping their promise to tens of millions of Americans who cannot keep up with their bills."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that "millions of teachers, nurses, and other public service workers are being buried by rising costs, including out-of-control student loan payments that are a direct result of President Trump's tax cuts for billionaires and Secretary McMahon’s callous mismanagement of the student debt portfolio."

“We had to sue McMahon once to force her to follow the law and respect borrowers’ rights to lower student loan payments, and this reorganization won't solve the issue—it will only make things worse," said Weingarten. "As voters head to the polls, they should remember that Trump and McMahon pretending to shrink the Department of Education—while in practice throttling its core functions in reams of red tape—is not doing anything to shrink working families’ bills.”