Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana has introduced a bill that would require the Department of Education to make the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form available each year on October 1st. He says he made this bill because he thinks the Department of Education points fingers instead of getting the FAFSA out.
“We’re trying to just put the scrutiny [and] the spotlight on them so that they know by golly, this has got to be done by October the first,” he explains.
Previous FAFSA forms have faced significant delays which also pushed back when colleges can make financial aid offers once they receive the form. For instance, Cassidy points out that this year, the FAFSA program wasn’t fully up and running until late January, then was further delayed in getting the forms to college until March. Some of last year’s FAFSA forms that had processing or data errors weren’t reprocessed until after May 1st, the deadline for many students to commit to a college.
Cassidy says when it comes to the FAFSA, the Department of Education has been, “you know, meeting the letter of the law but not the actual intent of the law. No, we want them available, and we want them available for the students and their families to begin making the calculations necessary for their future.”
Though the bill calls for a change to the FAFSA program put in place by the Biden administration, Cassidy expects the bill to be received well by both parties. In fact, he thinks the bill is more common sense than political.
“These are our young people trying to figure out if they can get [and] what kind of student loan packages they can get to go to a certain university,” he says. “That’s a kind of basic function of government.”
Republican Representative Erin Houchin of Indiana has introduced companion legislation to this bill in the House of Representatives.
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