Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, well, today is May 1, which is National College Decision Day. This is normally such an exciting occasion for students in my home State of West Virginia--and your home States--would be finalizing those really fun and hard decisions about which college or university to attend in the fall. There is much to look forward to.

This year, the customary hopefulness has been replaced by anxiety, fear, and apprehension as confusions and questions take hold regarding the availability of support that has long accompanied one of the most important decisions of our young students' lives.

When it comes to the 2024 FAFSA applications, the data from the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission paints a very bleak picture.

Compared to the same time last year, freshmen--these are national statistics--freshmen FAFSA completion rates are down 35.3 percent. For Pell-eligible students, FAFSA completion rates are down 32 percent. For nontraditional students 25 and older, FAFSA completion rates are down 35 percent. These are national figures. The total number of high school students who completed FAFSA is down 39.6 percent, and the total number of high school students who submitted a FAFSA is down 31.6 percent.

These percentages ring true in my home State of West Virginia. Back home, because of President Biden's FAFSA fiasco, 3,643 West Virginia students are left hanging in the balance, severely jeopardizing college access and affordability for students in West Virginia, many of whom are that first-time college goer in their family.

This is just another way that President Biden and his administration are threatening a form of the American dream and destroying the vision to implement a simplified FAFSA process that was intended by Congress.

So how did we get here? Well, this is an interesting statistic here, too. FAFSA completion rates among West Virginia students age 25 or up-- so those are students maybe who took a couple years in the military, in the workforce, and they want to go back to school--are down 35 percent.

So how did we get here? In December of 2020, when I was here, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act to simplify and improve the process of applying for Federal student aid.

Federal student aid and the FAFSA were first authorized in 1992 as a way to provide a critical lifeline for our students.

In 2020, Congress made this simplification effort a bipartisan priority championed by my friend, whom we miss dearly, Senator Lamar Alexander, a former Cabinet Secretary of the Department of Education. But unfortunately the administration's implementation of this law has not made things better for students. Instead, it has created an unmitigated disaster caused by an inexcusable failure of leadership from the White House and the Department of Education.

The deadline to update the FAFSA should have come as no surprise. Congress gave the administration an extra year. They had 3 years, and we gave them an extra year to complete it--4 years. Implementation of this law should have been a top priority for the Biden administration. Instead, what happened? The political leadership of the Department of Ed chose to take time, resources, and personnel to advance the administration's priorities around canceling student debt. This is proof of the administration blatantly putting politics before our students, and that is simply indefensible.

I have spoken with so many West Virginians in every part of this process in the past several months who are very angry about the Department of Education's misplaced priorities. They feel discouraged about their futures because of the bungled implementation.

This is obviously a huge issue for students and their families, but it is a tremendous challenge for our colleges and universities at the same time.

The Department of Education claims that there is nothing more important right now--well, it is college decision day; I guess maybe that is correct--than fixing the issues around the FAFSA process, but those words have yet to be backed up by much action.

While there is no guarantee that the administration will get their act together, there are two things that are certain: No. 1, students deserve better, and their families; No. 2, Senate Republicans will remain committed to holding the administration accountable and pushing for a fix to this issue.

Back in January, I joined a bicameral group of congressional Republicans requesting that the Government Accountability Office investigate the administration's botched FAFSA. That was in January. This investigation is now underway, and it is my hope it will yield answers as to what the failure could be and how similar mistakes would be avoided in the future.

Additionally, I helped author a formula fix to the FAFSA Simplification Act that passed the Senate and became law earlier this year. This fix intends to make financial aid more accessible for students by streamlining the process, and it corrected actions taken by the Department of Education in February that would have jeopardized future Pell grant awards for students.

Then, just yesterday, I questioned Secretary Cardona of the Department of Ed during our Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee hearing. I demanded answers, as did many, and accountability regarding the fiasco with the FAFSA that his Department has overseen. To say I was underwhelmed by his responses would be an understatement. Literally, he said: Well, we kind of are changing--we are kind of redoing--we think we are there.

Why did you make mistakes?

Well, we had missed deadlines.

Did you not see that coming for 4 years?

I mean just very, very nonspecific answers.

With the lack of action from the Biden administration, West Virginia's Governor, Jim Justice, declared a state of emergency on the matter just yesterday. This order will temporarily suspend the requirement for students to complete their FAFSA in order to qualify for our State's largest financial aid programs, providing needed relief and certainty for our students that they are not now receiving from the Department of Ed. At least they will get some certainty from the West Virginia Department of Ed.

I hope that in the future the Biden administration and their Department of Ed will be singularly focused on addressing outstanding issues and ensure that these problems are not present in the 2025 to 2026 FAFSA cycle. I can assure you that my Senate Republican colleagues and I will not stop putting pressure on the Biden administration to do the job they are supposed to do, as they have received ample resources from this Congress to do so.

I remain in constant contact with the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission to further understand what they are seeing and ways that we can help as they work to mitigate the fallout from the crisis the Biden administration has manufactured.

I commend the efforts from my Republican colleagues in the Senate on these issues as well--in particular, Senator Joni Ernst, who is going to speak next, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana--who have been outspoken on this issue with me, as well as many of our other colleagues, like the ones who are joining me on the floor to speak.

We have to remain focused on these issues surrounding the FAFSA application process and make sure that vital resources remain available for our students during the moments when they need them the most, delivering on what our students deserve, which should not be a partisan issue.

I am going to go off my formal remarks and say quickly, when they calculated in January and February what the parameters would be for the aid for the students, they determined that some students would be getting more than they should and that some students would be getting less than they should--totally unfair. But the Department's first response was, well, we will let the people who are getting more than they should--they can just keep this, and we will fix it next year. What does that say to the taxpayer who is paying for this? I mean, finally, public pressure came to bear, and they rescinded and recalculated everything.

So, with that, I encourage everybody to recognize this as a real problem across our country, particularly for our lower income, first- time college-going students--first time ever filling these forms out. It is not an easy thing anyway, and it is a daunting challenge to think about how to afford a higher education.

So, with that, I welcome my friend from Iowa and her good hard work on this, and I am glad to see she is on the floor to speak about this.

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