WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers excoriated IRS and U.S. Department of Education officials as “incompetent” or “untruthful” Wednesday at a lengthy hearing on a security breach that led to the shutdown of the IRS Data Retrieval Tool — an online tool known as the DRT that makes it easier for students to apply for federal financial aid and student loans.
“It appears to me, at the end of the day, you’re either in denial of what happened or you’re incompetent or you’re just untruthful in what’s happening here,” said U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga.
Hice was speaking collectively to five witnesses — two from the education department, two from the IRS and one from the U.S. Treasury — called to testify Wednesday at a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing pegged as the “FAFSA Data Breach.” (FAFSA is the acronym for Free Application for Federal Student Aid.)
“This is an emergency, not a mere inconvenience,” Kim Cook, executive director of the National College Access Network, stated in written testimony.
Cook said she anticipates that approximately 10 million FAFSAs have yet to be filed this year, mostly among lower-income students who tend to file later, as well as renewing college students, community college students, and older or part-time students who file closer to the start of school.
Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said in written testimony the DRT outage “harms students and families in multiple ways, making the FAFSA more difficult to complete, making more students subject to verification, and leaving families with fewer available financial aid office resources for help navigating the financial aid process.”
