Vice Presidential Pool Reports of June 2, 2022

VP pool report #1

Good afternoon. I'll be your print pooler for Vice President Harris' event at the Education Department this afternoon. The Vice President walked out of the White House at 1:06pm. We are rolling to the Education Department from West Executive Avenue. Feel free to reach out with questions.

From the VP's guidance:

At 1:20PM EDT, the Vice President will announce the U.S. Department of Education's plan to cancel all remaining federal student loans for borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges. This event at the Lyndon Baines Johnson U.S. Department of Education Building will be pooled press, open to pre-credentialed media, and livestreamed at WhiteHouse.gov/live.

VP pool report #2

The motorcade arrived at the Department of Education at 1:12pm. Pool has not seen Vice President Harris since we arrived. We're in a room with about 50 people waiting for the event to start. It will be streamed live on the White House website. I'll give a heads up once the programs starts. An announcer just said it would begin momentarily.

VP pool report #3 - program starting

The program has started; see below for a speaker line up.

From the White House:

Program:

Under Secretary James Kvaal delivers remarks
Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray delivers remarks
Secretary Cardona proceeds to podium delivers remarks
Vice President Harris delivers remarks

On Background from Senior Administration Official

Tomorrow (6/2/22), during an event at the U.S. Department of Education, Vice President Kamala Harris will announce that the Education Department has approved a $5.8 billion group discharge to cancel all remaining loans for 560,000 borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges. Then-Attorney General Kamala Harris' lawsuit against Corinthian played a key role in the Education Department's work to approve loan discharges for borrowers harmed by Corinthian's wrongdoing. As a result of then-Attorney General Harris's lawsuit, Corinthian had to declare bankruptcy.

At the event tomorrow, the Vice President will be joined by Secretary Miguel Cardona, Secretary of U.S. Department of Education, Undersecretary James Kvaal, U.S. Department of Education, and Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray, U.S. Department of Education.

This announcement will extend relief to borrowers who have already applied for discharge as well as borrowers who have not yet applied for a borrower defense discharge. For borrowers who have not applied, the Department of Education will now discharge their Corinthian loans without any additional action on their part. The action is the largest single loan discharge the Department has made in history.

Providing this targeted relief is part of the Biden-Harris Administration's continued commitment to helping borrowers who are struggling the most by ensuring discharge programs provide borrowers the complete relief to which they are entitled. Today's action brings the total loan relief the Biden-Harris Administration has approved for borrowers to $25 billion since January 2021.

The Vice President has continued fighting for consumers. In April, she announced new actions to protect consumers and lessen the burden of medical debt on American families. In March, the Vice President announced the release of a Biden-Harris plan to develop a transformative set of actions to root out racial and ethnic bias in home valuations.

In her remarks tomorrow, the Vice President will discuss why this announcement, of up to nearly $6 billion in debt relief, will result in more money in the pockets of Americans who have faced significant debt.

Below, please find the press release on the announcement form the U.S. Department of Education:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 2, 2022
Contact: Press Office
(202) 401-1576 or press@ed.gov

Education Department Approves $5.8 Billion Group Discharge to Cancel all Remaining Loans for 560,000 Borrowers who Attended Corinthian

Then-Attorney General Kamala Harris' lawsuit against Corinthian played key role in Education Department's work to approve loan discharges for borrowers harmed by Corinthian's wrongdoing

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (Department) announced it will discharge all remaining federal student loans borrowed to attend any campus owned or operated by Corinthian Colleges Inc. (Corinthian) from its founding in 1995 through its closure in April 2015. This will result in 560,000 borrowers receiving $5.8 billion in full loan discharges. This includes borrowers who have not yet applied for aborrower defense discharge, who will have their Corinthian loans discharged without any additional action on their part.

The action is the largest single loan discharge the Department has made in history. Providing this targeted relief is part of the Biden-Harris Administration's continued commitment to helping borrowers who are struggling the most by ensuring discharge programs provide borrowers the complete relief to which they are entitled. Today's action brings the total loan relief the Biden-Harris Administration has approved for borrowers to $25 billion since January 2021.

The announcement today builds upon conclusions first reached by the Department of Education in 2015 that Corinthian engaged in widespread and pervasive misrepresentations related to a borrower's employment prospects, including guarantees they would find a job. Corinthian also made pervasive misstatements to prospective students about the ability to transfer credits and falsified their public job placement rates. Founded in 1995, Corinthian acquired several troubled private for-profit colleges across the country. At its peak in 2010, it enrolled more than 110,000 students at 105 campuses.

Then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris' investigation into Corinthian played a key role in developing findings against the for-profit college chain and the Department's overall work to discharge the loans of borrowers who were harmed by its wrongdoing, a process that has helped cancel the loans of more than 100,000 borrowers to date.

"As of today, every student deceived, defrauded, and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans," said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. "For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep. While our actions today will relieve Corinthian Colleges' victims of their burdens, the Department of Education is actively ramping up oversight to better protect today's students from tactics and make sure that for-profit institutions – and the corporations that own them – never again get away with such abuse."

Vice President Kamala Harris' History on Holding Corinthian Colleges Accountable

In 2013, Vice President Kamala Harris sued Corinthian when she was attorney general of California, alleging that the company intentionally misrepresented to its students about job placement rates and was engaging in deceptive and false advertising and recruitment. Then-Attorney General Harris' investigation and lawsuit triggered several other inquiries by the Department and other federal and state regulators as well as actions by the Department that ultimately resulted in Corinthian selling most of its campuses in 2014 and closing the remaining ones in 2015.

In 2015, the Department and then-Attorney General Harris released comprehensive findings showing that Corinthian misrepresented job placement rates in programs across the country. Those were the basis of the first borrower defense approvals against Corinthian. It also led the Department to find that the company misrepresented to borrowers who attended its Everest, Heald College, or WyoTech campuses about their ability to find a job using their Corinthian degree. The Department also later found that Corinthian misrepresented students' ability to transfer credits over the same period at all Everest campuses, except the few that had regional accreditation, the WyoTech campus in Laramie, Wyoming, and for borrowers who enrolled in certain programs at Heald campuses in California. In 2016, then-Attorney General Harris and the state of California obtained a more than $1 billion judgment against Corinthian, in which the judge found that the company misrepresented job placement rates, its program offerings, whether students could transfer credits, among many other false or misleading actions.

The Department will soon begin notifying students who attended Corinthian of this decision, with the actual discharges following in the months after. Borrowers will not have to take any actions to receive their discharges.

The Department would like to thank the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as the Offices of the Attorney General in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and 15 others who shared information that informed the Department's findings. The Department also acknowledges the extensive work done by many former Corinthian students to raise attention to the problems at the institution and the need for a process to grant relief for those harmed. Finally, the Department would also like to thank the Federal Student Aid Borrower Defense Group and the Administrative Actions and Appeals Service Group in the Department's Federal Student Aid office and the Department's Office of the General Counsel, for their work on the Corinthian findings.

Continued Commitment to Targeted Relief

Today's action is part of the Department's broader goals to ensure better implementation of the student loan programs to get students and borrowers the benefits to which they are entitled, including loan discharges. These goals also include enacting lasting policies to make loans more affordable and prevent a future debt crisis by holding colleges accountable for leaving students with mountains of debt and without good jobs.

Including this group discharge, the Department has now approved $25 billion in loan forgiveness for 1.3 million borrowers. This includes:

• $7.9 billion for 690,000 borrowers whose institutions took advantage of them through discharges related to borrower defense and school closures.
• $6.8 billion for more than 113,000 borrowers through Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF).
• More than $8.5 billion in total and permanent disability discharges for more than 400,000 borrowers.

The Department also recently announced fixes to long-standing problems in income-driven repayment that will help thousands of borrowers receive forgiveness through that program as well as 40,000 borrowers who receive PSLF.

The Department is also working on new regulations that will permanently improve a variety of the existing student loan relief programs, significantly reduce monthly payments, and provide greater protections for students and taxpayers against unaffordable debts.

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VP pool report #4 - VP to address Tulsa

Flagging this from Harris press secretary Kirsten Allen -

Flagging that at the top of her remarks today for the U.S. Department of Education/Corinthian event, the Vice President will address the Tulsa shooting. Her remarks are slated to start around 1:35p ET

VP pool report #5 — Harris takes stage

Harris walked up to the podium at 1:38pm. Again, program is streaming live on the White House website.

VP pool report #7 - back at WH

We arrived back at the White House around 2pm. That's all for me today. Feel free to reach out with questions.