Obama Admin Gives Taxpayers Silent Treatment

A taxpayer advocate group that was granted a meeting with the Obama administration last Friday to discuss a student loan regulation that could cost upwards of $43 billion was met with silence when it questioned the approval process for the plan.

The new regulation from the Department of Education, which would discharge student loan debt for borrowers claiming any misrepresentation, is estimated by the agency to cost taxpayers anywhere between $2 billion and $43 billion. Taxpayer advocates requested the meeting with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to get answers about how the agency could possibly approve such an impactful regulation without receiving a more precise cost analysis.

Phil Kerpen, who met with OIRA on Friday, said on Tuesday that all of his questions regarding the regulation went unanswered by either the OIRA representative in the room or White House and Department of Education representatives that were participating in the meeting by phone.

Kerpen said that he peppered OIRA with questions such as whether it had conducted a thorough analysis of the regulation, but that all the questions were met with silence..

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