Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), along with Sens. John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Mike Braun (R-Indiana), Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), Steve Daines (R-South Dakota), Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Marco Rubio (R-Florida), and Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), today sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. The letter seeks answers about federal employees potentially receiving refunds for student loan payments that the federal government made on their behalf.

In part, the members wrote:

“Your current guidance raises the troubling possibility that over 12,000 federal employees who benefit from these taxpayers funded repayment programs could receive direct checks to ‘reimburse’ them for loan repayments already made by taxpayers. Your Department explicitly tells borrowers that payments can only be ‘refunded to you, even if someone else made a payment on your loan.’ This could allow federal employees to receive thousands of dollars in refunds for student loans payments that they never actually made themselves.”

Full text of the letter may be found here