美国国家公共电台 NPR Worries That A Federal Student Loan Watchdog Will Be Muzzled

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

If you've got student loans, you might want to listen closely to this next story. The Trump¹ administration is diluting² the power of a federal office that's supposed to look out for people with student loans. It's called the office of Students and Young Consumers. And over the years, it has helped return close to a billion dollars to student loan borrowers who were wronged. Critics worry that this new move will make it hard, if not impossible, for the agency to keep doing that work. NPR's Chris Arnold joins us now. He has obtained an internal government memo³ outlining this change. Hey, Chris.

CHRIS ARNOLD, BYLINE⁴: Hey, Rachel and David.

MARTIN: So this involves the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has a new boss who has been really controversial. And now we've got this memo. What's going on here?

ARNOLD: Right. So this is an ongoing⁵ story of the president finding basically the person who disliked this bureau the most and putting that person in charge of running it.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

ARNOLD: We're talking about former representative - or former Congressman⁶ Mick Mulvaney.

MARTIN: Right.

ARNOLD: He was a Republican, sponsored legislation to abolish this bureau when he was in Congress. And he and other Republicans feel like, look, it's too powerful, it's been too aggressive. And since he's come on board, he's taken a series of steps to sort of water down its mission.

MARTIN: Right.

ARNOLD: And in this latest move, he's taken the unit at the bureau that works to protect student loan borrowers and essentially⁷ given it a demotion. So it's now under the control of a different division that does financial education, and that division doesn't go after wrongdoers and doesn't do the kinds of things that it was doing before.

MARTIN: OK. So what does that mean for people who have student loans? I mean, you say it's been a demotion for this particular agency. What's that going to mean in practice?

ARNOLD: Right. I mean, it may not sound like the most terrible thing in the world, but this is why people are upset. And this has been a very active office in the past. For example, tens of thousands of active military service members were being overcharged on their student loans. And this office looked into this. It got the Justice Department involved. And it clawed back $60 million that got returned to service members.

MARTIN: Wow.

ARNOLD: And not only that, it changed industry practices so that this would stop happening. It also had a hand in other lawsuits⁸ and settlements - were giving more than $750 million back to people who had been wronged with student loans. And so the worry is that this watchdog will now be told, you know, why don't you stick to printing out pamphlets about financial education for students and stuff and stop doing all these other things?

MARTIN: So just distribute educational materials and don't go after the bad guys.

ARNOLD: Right. And I talked to former Congress - or former Consumer Protection Bureau lawyer Christopher Peterson. Here's what he had to say about this move by Mulvaney.

CHRISTOPHER PETERSON: This is an appalling⁹ step. This is a limitation of one of the most important and effective offices looking out for student loan borrowers all across America.

MARTIN: So then you've got to ask the question, why would they do this? I mean, what is Mick Mulvaney saying as the justification¹⁰ for this?

ARNOLD: Well, in a statement, his press person says this is just a, quote, "modest organizational chart change" and that there is, quote, "no formal or even practical change." So basically nothing to see here, nothing to be concerned about. But current and former staffers at the bureau and people with consumer groups, they all say we're not really buying that. And they say, look, Mulvaney's already changed the mission statement of the bureau. He's said he's going to make it a much less aggressive regulator. They see this as part of that, and they say, look, we just crested¹¹ the $1.5 trillion mark for student loans. That's twice what it was a decade ago. This isn't the time to weaken this office, whose only mission it is to protect the rights of student loan borrowers. There'll be out today at the bureau. So we'll be watching to see what happens next.

MARTIN: All right. NPR's Chris Arnold for us this morning. Thanks so much, Chris.

ARNOLD: You're welcome.

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