Ex-Private Student Loan CEO Leaves Education Dept, Calls For Cancelling Student Loans

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, July 18, 2018 in Washington, DC. Photo by Olivier Douliery/ Abaca Press
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos speaks during a Cabinet meeting with President Donald Trump on July 18, 2018. (Photo by Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images)
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In a strange twist, a top Education Department official who oversaw federal student loans suddenly resigned on Thursday and proposed a sweeping plan to tackle student debt.

The Wall Street Journal reported that A. Wayne Johnson, appointed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to serve as the the chief strategy and transformation officer of the department’s Office of Federal Student Aid, has stepped down and will run for Sen. Johnny Isakson’s (R-GA) seat.

Slamming the student loan system as “fundamentally broken,” Johnson proposed cancelling up to $50,000 in federal student loans for any borrower.

Johnson’s plan is particularly surprising given his former workplace’s repeated efforts to gut student forgiveness programs under DeVos’ leadership. He also served as CEO for several private student loan companies before he began working for the Trump administration.

The former official told the Wall Street Journal that his proposal aims to eliminate the government’s role in providing student loans and provide borrowers with a $50,000 voucher for tuition instead.

Meanwhile, a judge has threatened to hold DeVos in jail for refusing court orders to stop collecting loan payments from students of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges.

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Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for joce_m joce_m says:

    Jail for Betsy. Please.

  2. Avatar for bkmn bkmn says:

    Stop threatening and lock her up now.

  3. Ex-Private Student Loan CEO Leaves Education Dept, Calls For Cancelling Student Loans

    Pretty sure there’s a good joke in there somewhere.

    More than one, even.

  4. Time to chant…Lock Her Up!

    Still a mystery…

    Alfa Bank made up 80% of the DNS lookups to the Trump server, but another 19% came from Spectrum Health, a company owned by the husband of Betsy DeVos.

    So what is her husband up to next to Alfa Bank communicating with the TT server?

  5. Perhaps her brother Eric Prince can create a shadow army to defend his sister and her anti-education department. He can hire that idiot baseball umpire who’s planning on starting a civil (or as he spelled it “cival”, God help us) war over Trump’s impeachment.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

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