Surgeon General, Mental Health, Aging, NMB Nominations and FAFSA Fraud Bill

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will still come to order. We are waiting for a quorum, but we will start uh with opening statements. The nominees we are considering today have the qualifications and the integrity necessary to do the job. America needs a Surgeon General who makes decisions rooted in science, a leader who gives families clear medical guidance, and works to restore public trust in health institutions. With years of proven experience as a physician and a medical contributor, Doctor Sapphire is ready to take on this challenge. Doctor Westlake will also be a great addition to the Department of Health and Human Services as Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use. He has over two decades of clinical experience in community emergency medicine, and has been a champion for mental health and substance use disorder policy. including spearheading the Wisconsin model for my Halt-Fentonil Act, signed into law last year by President Trump. I'm confident that he will continue to be successful in this space. I will also be supporting Ms. Lazar to be the Assistant Secretary for Aging at HHS. She is more than qualified. Ms. Lazar has been forming the duties of the Assistant Secretary for more than a year now, and cares deeply for older Americans. She also helped lead the same organization during Trump one. I intend to support the health nominees before me today, but I'm deeply concerned, deeply concerned by reports over the weekend that the president considered giving OMB a direct role in individual NIH grant decisions. Politicians who have zero medical experience or background should have zero role in deciding which NIH grants get funded. I hope to see the White House agree and decide against politicizing the approval process. Scientific research, the health of our country, depends upon being driven by evidence and not by politics. As for Miss Sweat and Mister Ralf, they're committed to protecting workers' rights as they help settle disputes, ensuring that trains and planes keep running. I look forward to working with them. The committee is also considering the No Aid for Ghost Students Act. According to the US Government Accountability Office, the federal government loses an estimated two hundred and thirty-three to five hundred and twenty-one billion dollars to fraud every year. Money coming out of the pockets of people in Louisiana, out of the people of Kentucky and Vermont and all of us, that's just wasted. These fraudsters, fraudsters known as ghost students are using stolen or fake identities to submit FAFSA applications and to take federal student aid money. This legislation stops those fraudsters, fraud fraudsters, ensuring the aid goes to students in need. I appreciate the works of Senators Moody, Hassan, and Tuberville. With that, I recognize Senator Sanders.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, today we are voting

Never ends.

Today we're voting on three of President Trump's nominees for the Department of Health and Human Services. I will be voting against all of them. In my view, we need public health officials at the HHS who will have the courage to stand up for science and not simply act as a rubber stamp for Secretary Kennedy's dangerous anti-vaccine agenda and his unacceptable war on science. After carefully reviewing the records of these nominees, I do not believe that they will be able to do that. Uh, Doctor Nicole Safire, uh, President Trump's nominee to be Surgeon General. has questioned the need for hepatitis B vaccinations at birth at a time when the scientific data has been clear. Hepatitis B vaccine has successfully reduced the number of babies and young people young children infected by this virus from twenty thousand a year to fewer than twenty. She inappropriately criticized the American Academy of Pediatrics when it pushed back against changes to the vaccine schedule, recommended by Secretary Kennedy's hand-picked advisors. Mister Chairman, we need a Surgeon General who will tell parents the truth about vaccines, not someone who misleads the public by stating that, quote, "there have been children who have died from the MMR vaccine," end quote, "during the worst measles outbreak in more than thirty years." We need a Surgeon General who will stand on the side of parents, not big tobacco, by speaking out against the Trump Administration's outrageous decision. to approve the new fruit flavored e-cigarettes, which he has refused to do. We need a surgeon general who will stand up for science and the truth, not conspiracy theories and misinformation. Doctor Sapphire is not that person. I'm also opposed to President Trump's nominees to the National Mediation Board that we are considering today. The National Mediation Board coordinates labor management relations within the US railroad and airline industries. Workers in those industries cannot strike without approval from this board. Last year, President Trump fired board member Deidre Deidre Hamilton, who the Senate confirmed to the board in twenty twenty three. Miss Hamilton was a champion for workers' rights and an attorney for the Association of Flight Attendants before she joined the board. This committee should not accept the president firing a board member who was confirmed by the Senate and replacing her with a pick approved by the airline industry. Finally, Mister Chairman, we are also considering the so-called No Aid for Ghosts Students Act. The proponents of this bill tell us that they want to combat fraud. I think there is nobody on this committee who disagrees with that goal. However, I'm afraid that this bill, as currently written, will make it harder for working class Americans, incarcerated students, homeless students and students who lack access to the internet from receiving the Pell Grants and financial aid they desperately need. That is why this legislation is strongly opposed by the American Federation of Teachers and over a dozen other groups, representing millions of students and teachers throughout the country. As currently written, this bill could deny aid to legitimate students, it could enable the Trump administration to politically target students and colleges who disagree with them, and it leaves students who are wrongfully denied aid limited recourse to receive the financial assistance that they are entitled to. Further, this bill does nothing to address the very real affordability crisis students are facing in this country today. In America right now, hundreds of thousands of bright young people are not going to college, not because they are unqualified, but because they cannot afford it. Unfortunately, President Trump's so-called big, beautiful bill has made a bad situation even worse by making the largest cut to higher education in American history. The result? The average college graduate is now forced to pay four thousand dollars more each and every year on their student loan payments, about two hundred and forty-four dollars a month. In my view, that must change. That is why I'll be offering an amendment to reverse these devastating cuts to higher education and restore access to federal financial aid for millions of students. And further, in America today, an increasing number of seniors, this is really quite unbelievable, are in danger of having their social security checks garnished to pay back student loans they took out decades ago. How absurd is that? In the richest country in the history of the world, no senior should have their social security payments taken away from them to pay back student debt. This is especially true when seniors throughout the country already cannot afford the skyrocketing prices of health care, prescription drugs, and housing. And that is why I'll be offering an amendment to prohibit the federal government from garnishing the social security checks of seniors and people with disabilities to pay back student debt. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We're still waiting for Senator Murkowski, so in the interest of time, members should stay here, but we'll proceed to the consideration of the, uh, No Aid for Ghost Students Act of twenty twenty six. And then when Senator Murkowski arrives, we will then go into um the elect the vote for the nominees. OK. Um For the awareness of all senators and staff, we intend to vote on amendments as they are raised, but will hold the vote on final passage of the bill until the end of the session. We'll keep members and staff updated on the timing of the vote on final passage. As a reminder, when discussing an amendment, please identify which amendment you are discussing by its name and uh number. I will now begin the consideration of S four four two eight, the no aid for go students act. I thank Senator Moody and our co-lead, Senator Hassan, for their leadership on this issue. The bill has undergone extensive bipartisan negotiations, stakeholder engagement, and multiple rounds of technical feedback from the administration. Federal student aid has seen an alarming increase in fraudulent applications in recent years. We must ensure taxpayer dollars go towards the students who need them, not the scammers and fraudsters. Every stolen or lost dollar could have helped another student achieve their educational dream, and frankly, when the public hears about it, undermines their faith in these sorts of programs. There's more at stake than even the hundreds of billions of dollars. We have a manager's amendment S four four two eight. I move to adopt the manager's amendment and the nature of a substitute, and have it considered original text for the purpose of further amendments. All those in favor please say aye.

Aye.

Aye. All opposed say nay. The ayes have it, the motion is agreed to. Uh, I'm now gonna ask Senator Moody to offer her amendments as she is the lead author on the bill. Senator Moody.

Uh, thank you, Chairman Cassidy. I don't think it's lost on anyone that America has a fraud problem. Uh, we see it every single day, and I commend you, Chairman, and Senator Hassan for the extensive work you have both done to help bring this important bipartisan legislation before the committee today. Um, it's simple that if we're gonna dedicate taxpayers to helping students pursue an education we need to make sure that that money that we dedicate goes to students, and not fraudsters. Ghost students as they are called, which are not real students, it's just fraudsters posing as students to try and get uh taxpayer dollars. Go students have stolen billions in student aid, and that deprives American students the assistance Congress has provided for them. The Trump administration has established an effective system right now that quickly screens applications for markers of suspicion and it briefly holds payments to applicants that are flagged as highly suspicious, and it requires them to prove their identity before the funds go out. I can tell you as a former prosecutor, as a former attorney general, once the funds go out, it is incredibly hard to ever get them back. So the American taxpayers are out that money, and we're just we we we cannot then go to rightfully deserving students. The No Aid for Ghosts Students Act, which we're considering right now, will protect students and taxpayers from fr- fraud by codifying the system and providing additional guardrails to protect students, actual students, that are seeking help. This is easy, straightforward, we've sought bipartisan input all the way up until today, uh and I urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill to protect students, and fraudst- and and and protect them uh against fraudsters that are trying to um take money that is available to them. So thank you so much, Mister Chairman.

Does anyone else wish to comment upon this amendment or on from the bill in general?

Mister.

Senator Hassan.

Mister Chairman, thank you. And I wanna also thank Senator Moody for her leadership here. and support the amendment that she and i have just uh bringing forward which makes a technical uh grammar uh correction to the bill but let me speak to the substance for a second if i could while congress and the department of education have worked for years to prevent financial aid fraud criminals have become increasingly sophisticated with their tactics armed with the power of ai technological advancements and stolen identities that they've gotten on the dark web This bipartisan bill seeks to better protect our financial aid system from identity theft that is harming everyday individuals, straining colleges, and stealing aid from those who need it most. And I do wanna point out that this is not just about protecting colleges and the overall student body and the financial aid system. Every single day people across the country are targeted by financial aid fraudsters, and we have to act now to protect those people. for example a financial aid administrator at a school in my state recently detected suspicious activity when reviewing financial aid disbursements and found that a fraudster had stolen the identity of an individual who was not enrolled at the college in order to obtain financial aid the individual whose identity was stolen is severely disabled and nonverbal and his mother had no idea that his identity had been used to steal more than seven thousand dollars in financial aid in another case a financial aid administrator was contacted by an individual who saw student loans on her credit report even though she had never attended that new hampshire school and had never applied for student loans of any kind in this case fraudsters had stolen nearly sixty five hundred dollars in federal student loans using her identity stories like this exist in every one of our states and we have a role and responsibility to help schools protect financial aid but also to protect people from having their identities stolen because the work it takes for a disabled nonverbal person to reclaim their identity and qualify for instance for other benefits is significant so this is a really important bill it has safeguards in place uh to address some of the concerns that colleagues on my side of the aisle have raised and i hope very much that people will support it thank you mister chair

Senator Hassan um Chairman's privilege is Senator Moody Senator Sanders raised the issue that this could keep people who are lower income or rural or others from being able to access student aid. Can you please address that concern?

Go ahead.

Yes, I I will do that. In fact, I we would not have put this bill up in a by in a worked on it together or put this bill up, if it wasn't to protect genuine students that are making application. This bill is to protect against when a a s- an application comes up, they're reviewing that, and you may have a purported student out of Tampa, Florida with an IP address in Africa. Like these are things that we, you can briefly hold, make sure the funds don't go out to a ghost student um just to confirm the identity of the perp per person making application. There are simple fixes that we can make in our laws right now that would save billions in taxpayer money, this is one of them.

So unless the person that we fear may lose access to a loan, has an IP address in Romania, or North Korea, or Africa.

That was one of the that's an example that I was giving you, and that these would only, and again briefly, they can they can do these very quickly. It's not like you're holding these days or weeks. They hold it for a moment, they confirm identity. Sometimes they can do it uh online with the applicant um and it we we were very specific that it's the ones that are marked as highly suspicious

ok

and

does so

and i would just add that fraudsters target the most vulnerable low income students because these are the people who are less able to have fewer tools to protect their credit um and their identity and so uh we have guardrails in the bill to insure that the

if there's no objection i move to adopt this by voice vote

the the uh The amendment, yes.

The amendment, the am- the amendment. All those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, say nay. The amendment is adopted. Do senators Uh, do any members wish to offer amendments? Senator Sanders.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I call up uh Sanders's amendment number one. Uh, this amendment is simple and it's straightforward. It would simply prohibit the federal government garnishing the social security checks of seniors and people with disabilities to pay back student loans, many of them took out decades ago. You know, when we talk about student loans, we kind of think we're talking about young people in their twenties or thirties. I've had a meeting with people who are grandparents, who are still paying back their student loans. Uh, and as a result of Trump's recent decisions, the amount that they're paying back has gone up very significantly. as the chairman in america today more than one in three seniors with student loans are reliant on their social security checks to make ends meet half of seniors who had a social security check garnished as a result of unpaid student debt skipped a doctor's visit or could not obtain the prescription drugs they needed because they could not afford it i mean in the richest country in the history of the world no senior should have their social security payments taken away from them to pay back student debt and i urge my colleagues uh to support this amendment

i understand the ranking members concern but i want to point out this amendment doesn't have a score or technical assistance would you consider offering and withdrawing and i will agree to work with you on this and to um um get it done

well i thank you for the offer but i think uh what it tries to do is is pretty clear the chairman uh it is incomprehensible that when so many seniors are struggling today to stay alive uh when half a seniors older people in this country don't have money saved for their retirement you don't garnish their social security because they can't afford to pay back a student debt that they incurred decades before i think it speaks to itself and i would uh like a vote on this amendment and let me say for the record i agree

Um, social security checks being garnished to repay, garnered being to repay student loans is something that we should all be concerned about, but I'll point out it's not happening. In June twenty twenty five the Trump administration indefinitely paused garnishment of student social security checks. Um, but that said, under our system this amendment would score, and there has been no pay-for presented. Perhaps most importantly, Senate Republicans have already taken steps to mitigate the possibility of social security garnishment through reforms made in the Working Families Tax Cuts Act. And the folks who are theoretically most likely to have their social security check garnished to repay student loans are elderly parents and grandparents, who took out parent plus loans. That's why Senate Republicans capped parent plus loans at sixty-five K per student, this new limit ensuring parents and grandparents cannot borrow into excess, putting themselves into a situation that could lead to garnishment. I will um move to a tabless amendment, and encourage colleagues to do the same. The clerk shall call the roll.

Senator Paul.

Aye.

Senator Collins.

No.

Senator Murkowski.

Uh, she's an aye by a proxy.

Senator Marshall.

Aye.

Senator Scott. center holly center tuberville center banks center houston center moody center armstrong center sanders

no

center murray

no

center baldwin

no

center murphy center kane

uh no by proxy

center hassan

no

center hickenlooper

no by proxy

center markey

no by proxy

sir kim

no by proxy

senator blount rochester senator ulster brooks

no by proxy

chairman cassidy

aye

i have eleven eyes twelve nays

ok um is there anybody who wishes to comment upon the amendment ok seeing none we'll now vote on the adoption of the amendment i shall be voting no the call to roll

senator paul

no

senator collins

aye

senator Murkowski

she is no by proxy

sir marshall

no

senator scott

no

senator Hawley

no

senator tuberville

no

senator banks

no

senator Husted

no

senator moody senator armstrong

no

senator sanders

aye

senator murray senator baldwin senator murphy

aye

senator Kaine

yes aye by proxy i just tried

senator hassan

aye

senator hickenlooper

aye by proxy

center markey

aye by proxy

center kim

aye by proxy

center blunt rochester center also brooks

aye by proxy

s- chairman cassidy

aye no uh no i'm sorry i'm sorry

no

i'm an i'm no i'm sorry no

no ok i have twelve eyes eleven nays

ok the amendment passes now with the absence of a score

one for free

yes sir

and just so that i can understand how this works because i don't if uh if we have to be present for the eyes to win do they not have to be present for the eyes to win

no yes this is not not for amendments and no is not an object on passage can be done by process

but eyes on passage cannot be done by process if you need a majority ok got it

on no no no no

well darn thank you

thank you senator scott

talk talk to elizabeth

um

yeah

ok

so for we're not gonna vote on this today we will continue to work on it

given that we don't have a score on this we shall not vote on the bill today uh and we shall continue to work on this to hopefully get it into a condition where we can prevent three hundred to five hundred billion in fraud per year from going out the door um because of people with ip addresses in romania and africa and north korea filing fraudulent claims so

we still don't have morkowski she is still in route so i think that

might just have to wait

um do we have any sense of how far she might have

hold just a minute we're obviously waiting for senator Murkowski let me just make one more call to find out how far she is

she was in nome the last time i heard her

we could do an all four voter move everybody's got a tight schedule and so what we'll do is recess the hearing and we'll meet off the floor subject to the call of the chair subject to the call of the chair and will meet off the floor at a later vote in order to pass the nominees that we have before us that will be an en bloc vote as i as i understand senator sanders you've agreed to an en bloc vote for those folks so um it'll be uh a rapid vote uh but i thank everybody for their indulgence i'm gonna be hearing and then remember that we'll have a hearing for senator excuse me for doctor uh uh heidi overton after this to be the next fda commissioner but will take a five minute break