[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 161 (Thursday, September 17, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5699-S5700]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 FAFSA

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here this morning to talk about a 
hearing that we had in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions 
Committee this morning that affects 20 million families who have to 
fill this out every year. This is called the FAFSA. Usually, there is 
an adjective ahead of it. It is called the ``dreaded'' FAFSA.
  There are 400,000 Tennessee families who fill it out every year. If 
you want to go to college and you need a Pell grant or a student loan, 
you have to fill this out--108 questions. And then after you fill it 
out, the way it has been working and still works today, you have to 
send in the information on 22 of the questions to two different 
agencies: one to the IRS and one to the Education Department. And then 
they go through an elaborate process to check to see whether you have 
made any mistake.
  So let's say you are a homeless student or a student in foster care 
or you are not able to identify your parents or you are living with 
your grandparents or any of those people have an aversion to filling 
out 108-question Federal forms or giving their information to the 
government twice, then you don't go to college. That is what happens.
  In Tennessee, we have had a Governor named Bill Haslam in the 
legislature that said everybody in Tennessee without a degree, that you 
can have 2 more years of college free, but first you have to fill out 
this Federal form. They say this is the single biggest impediment to 
having the opportunity to have those 2 free years of higher education 
in our State.
  So you would think somebody would do something about that, right? 
Well, somebody has or at least has been trying to. Here is what it 
could be. This is 33 questions. Almost everybody agrees that this is 
better than this--the State counselors, the Governors, the teachers, 
the students, the families. You could fill it out more easily. It keeps 
many fewer students from walking away from the opportunity to go to 
college.
  So you would ask: Why don't you pass it? Well, Mr. President, that is 
exactly what Senator Michael Bennet, the Democratic Senator from 
Colorado, and I said 7 years ago in a hearing before the Senate 
Education Committee when we had four witnesses and we talked about 
this. And I said at the end: There seems to be a lot of agreement about 
this. Why don't the four of you experts--and these are people who work 
in financial aid who try to help students and who try to help minority 
students. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we are talking about all 
over America today. What do we do about racial justice? What do we do 
to help low-income students? How do we help people who are especially 
hurt by a pandemic?
  Well, 7 years ago, I said: Would you be willing to write us a letter, 
each of you, and tell us exactly what to do to eliminate the complexity 
of this FAFSA? What they said was that most of these questions are 
unnecessary and that the Federal Government doesn't need to know the 
answer to these questions to decide whether you are eligible for a Pell 
grant or eligible for a student loan. That is what they all said. So 
the four witnesses who had testified looked at each other and said: We 
don't need to write you separate letters. We will write you one letter 
because we all agree on what to do. So they did.
  Senator Bennet and I introduced legislation called the FAST Act that 
would reduce this to the size of a postcard. It only had two questions 
on it. Well, that was too simplified. What we found out, for example, 
was that the State of Indiana and the State of Tennessee have their 
student aid, and they rely on some of this information to decide what 
aid to give in addition to the Federal aid. So we took the questions 
off this, and then they would have to ask the questions, so we really 
hadn't solved any problems.
  So we kept working. Senator Murray, the Democratic leader of our 
committee, and I worked together on this during these 7 years, and we 
began to make some progress. The progress we made first was with the 
Obama administration, and they agreed to what sounded like a simple 
change. They just administratively allowed you to use your previous 
year's tax returns rather than your current year's tax returns to fill 
out the 22 tax questions on this form. You can imagine how hard it 
would be to use this year's tax returns, so that was a big help.

  Then the Trump administration put this 108-questionnaire on an app so 
you can use your iPhone to fill it out. Now, that would be pretty hard 
for me, but I have seen a lot of the youngsters in Tennessee in the 
Sevier County High School, for example, who went right to work. They 
did a pretty quick job of doing this. That helped a lot.
  Then, Senator Murray and I, Senator Jones from Alabama and Senator 
Scott from South Carolina--last year we introduced a bill called the 
FUTURE Act, and the FUTURE Act did two things. It said that for 22 of 
the questions here, the ones that you have to give to the government 
twice--you give it to the Education Department and you give it to the 
IRS, and then they check to see if you made a mistake, and if they do, 
they slow down your aid. We said: Let's simplify that. Let's just say 
all you have to do is check a box, and the IRS will answer those 22 
questions for you. That is a law now, and it will take a couple of 
years to implement because, again, we are talking about 20 million 
families a year. So we saved them that trouble.
  Now, guess what else we saved. We saved enough money to permanently 
fund historically Black colleges. How about that? Filling out all this 
form didn't save the government money; it cost the government money. So 
we were able, in one act, to save 20 million families--many of them 
minority families and most of them low income--the trouble of filling 
out those 22 questions and permanently fund Black colleges. So now we 
have legislation, Senator Jones and I and others--and there are many 
Senators who have been involved in this, in addition to Senator Murray. 
Senator Booker has had an interest, and Senator Collins, Senator King, 
Senator Burr. Again, I mentioned Senator Bennet earlier. You can see 
Republicans and Democrats all see the wisdom of this, as well as every 
witness we have ever had who comes before us. So we have a new bill 
that says: Let's get rid of 53 questions and turn this into this. That 
is what the hearing was about today.
  Now, why wouldn't we do that? Almost everyone says we should. Should 
we deliberately require 20 million families to answer 53 unnecessary 
questions that discourage many low-income students from going to 
college? Should we insist on that? I don't think so.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, this would probably 
mean that about 400,000 more students would apply for Pell grants. That 
is what the Pell grant is for. It is to encourage low-income students 
who want a ticket to the head of the line, a ticket called higher 
education, a ticket that the college board said increases your earnings 
by $1 million over your lifetime if you get a 4-year degree, and this 
is our effort to help low-income students get that ticket to a better 
life and a better education and more money.
  So why wouldn't we do it and why wouldn't we do it during this 
pandemic? This has to be the strangest year of college in a century--at 
least a century. Students are stressed out, families are stressed out, 
and then we are going to add to the stress by saying: And in addition, 
your friendly Federal Government, in order for you to get a Pell grant, 
is going to insist that you answer 53 questions that everybody says are 
unnecessary for the government to determine whether you are eligible 
for the loan or for the grant.
  And then there is one final reason we should do it. The act that 
Senator Murray and Senator Jones and Senator Scott and I introduced and 
became law last year with President Trump's signature, the one that 
saved enough money to permanently fund historically Black colleges, 
that is going to take a couple of years to implement. So if we go ahead 
and pass the law that turns this into this before the end of this year, 
we can do both of them at the same time.
  I think the American people would feel pretty good about the U.S. 
Congress that, in the midst of a pandemic, finished its work on such an 
important piece of legislation.

[[Page S5700]]

  Our hearing today was well attended. We had four of the same 
witnesses who came 7 years ago and said: There is no need to ask all 
these questions. Nobody needs them. Nobody needs the answers. All it 
does is turn away from college students whom we want to encourage to 
go.
  Now, think about that. That is a deliberate act by the Federal 
Government not to change that. It doesn't save any money. It doesn't 
eliminate any fraud. All it does is turn away from college the people 
whom we want to encourage to have a chance to go.
  I am hopeful that the hearing today and our repeated efforts will 
help us create approval of this before the end of the year. Since 
nobody tells me they are against it, you would think we would do it. 
Sometimes people say: Well, we need to agree on everything before we 
pass anything. Sometimes that is true. But when something is this 
important, when it affects this many families, and when it comes at a 
time when families are under stress anyway, let's turn a 108-question 
FAFSA into a 33-question FAFSA. Let's allow that to be implemented by 
the Federal Government at the same time last year's law is implemented, 
and let's make it simpler and easier for deserving Americans to go to 
college.
  There are lots of other things we need to do about higher education. 
We need more accountability. We need to deal with student loans. There 
are many things we need to do. We have had a lot of discussions about 
those. We are not going to get agreement on that this year, but just as 
we were able to do for the historically Black colleges last year and 
the first step of the FAFSA, I think it would be wise to finish the 
job.
  I was very pleased with our hearing. I am grateful to Senator Murray 
for her kind comments this morning that she made and for her friendship 
and her willingness to work with me on this, and I would hope that, for 
the benefit of those 20 million families, we would have some success.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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