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Joe Biden is adopting a version of tuition-free college in an effort to reach out to Bernie Sanders’s young supporters as the former vice president attempts to unite the two wings of the Democratic Party around him, Bloomberg News reported. Biden now supports making public college and university tuition free for all students whose families earn less than $125,000 a year, his campaign said yesterday. It’s the second policy concession his campaign has made to progressive opponents this week, following his backing of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plan to fix the bankruptcy system. Biden and Warren battled over bankruptcy legislation more than a decade ago. But Biden’s campaign said that he now supports her plan, which would make it easier for individuals to get relief through bankruptcy and would eliminate rules that make it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.

Senate Democrats, joined by a handful of Republicans, voted on Wednesday to reverse a Department of Education rule they say reduces protections for student borrowers, The Hill reported. Senators voted 53-42 to block the rule, which was crafted by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. The bill has already passed the House, sending it to President Trump’s desk. The White House has warned that they will recommend he veto the bill. The rule would put restrictions on an Obama-era "borrower defense" rule that was meant to regulate the for-profit sector and protect students who had been misled by colleges. DeVos has argued that students should have to prove they were financially harmed. The more restrictive rule would give full relief only to students who earn much less than students in similar programs. Under the new formula, the remaining students would have no more than 75 percent of their loans forgiven. “DeVos has decided to change the way that students have to go through proving up their losses, and that’s why we’re here today,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said on the Senate floor. Republicans largely supported the Trump administration rule, arguing the changes helped protect against potential abuse of taxpayer dollars. "I don't have any doubt about the intent of the law and that the intention is good, but the concept is far too broad ... [and] is ripe for abuse," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Because Democrats are forcing the vote under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to try to strike down executive regulations, they only need a simple majority rather than the 60 votes normally required by the Senate.

The Federal Reserve said on Friday that consumer credit rose by $12 billion following a $20.3 billion surge in December, the Associated Press reported. The December number reflected the biggest increase in borrowing on credit cards in two decades. However, in January, credit card use fell by $3.04 billion following the revised gain of $11 billion in December. The category that includes auto loans and student loans increased $15.1 billion in January. That was up from a $9.2 billion gain in December and was the strongest increase since August. 

The U.S. Supreme Court seemed inclined to give the president more power over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as the justices considered whether Congress went too far in trying to insulate the agency from political pressure, Bloomberg News reported. Hearing arguments in Washington, D.C. yesterday, the Court’s conservatives suggested they agreed with Trump administration contentions that the Constitution requires the president to have broad ability to fire the agency’s director. When Congress set up the agency, it gave the director a five-year term and said the person could be ousted only for specified reasons. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the current CFPB director, an appointee of President Donald Trump, is serving a term that will last until the end of 2023. “The head of this agency will go at least three or four years into the next president’s term, and the next president might have a completely different conception of consumer financial regulatory issues, yet will be able to do nothing about it,” Kavanaugh said. The case could mean a fundamental change for the CFPB, created as the brainchild of now-Senator Elizabeth Warren after the 2008 financial crisis to regulate credit cards, auto loans and other consumer finance products. Read more.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-03/supreme-court-seems-…

Click here to read the transcript of yesterday's oral argument.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2019/1…

Today, the Supreme Court will hear a case about whether the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s structure as an independent agency with a single director is unconstitutional. Having failed at getting legislation passed, Wall Street, with the aid of the Trump administration, are now turning to the Supreme Court as their newest attempt to neuter the agency, according to an op-ed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren in USA TODAY. In 2007, Warren came up with the idea for the CFPB — a new federal agency dedicated to protecting families from predatory financial products and holding financial firms accountable for cheating consumers. The Supreme Court will decide whether Congress can design agencies in ways that allow for restoring effective, trustworthy government. If the Court instead follows the corporate-friendly ideology, they’ll make it harder for government to defend the people against economic predators — and harder for Congress to build government agencies that aren’t beholden to deep-pocketed interest groups.

Some American Express Co. salespeople strong-armed business owners to increase card sign-ups, according to more than a dozen current and former AmEx sales, customer-service and compliance employees, the Wall Street Journal reported. The salespeople have misrepresented card rewards and fees, checked credit reports without consent and, in some cases, issued cards that weren’t sought, the current and former employees said. An AmEx spokesman said the company found a very small number of cases “inconsistent with our sales policies.” “All of those instances were promptly and appropriately addressed with our customers, as necessary, and with our employees, including through disciplinary action,” he said. Current and former employees said that the dodgy sales tactics date to at least 2015, when AmEx was scrambling to retain Costco Wholesale Corp. small-business customers after the warehouse club ended their long-running partnership. The deal’s demise was a huge blow to AmEx. For 16 years, the warehouse club didn’t accept credit cards in its stores from any company but AmEx. AmEx also issued credit cards branded with the Costco logo that offered special perks. Small businesses were a particularly valuable slice of the Costco cohort. The warehouse club sells a lot of things they need—two-liter jugs of olive oil, bulk cleaning supplies, big-screen TVs, tires for their delivery vans. AmEx was about to lose the stream of fees on all of those card purchases.

The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation after a USA TODAY report showed an accredited college apparently had no faculty or students. Reagan National University was approved by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools (ACICS). It has a history of approving several for-profit universities that suddenly closed, such as ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges in the mid-2010s. The accreditor still operates mainly because it was saved by the Education Department in 2018 under Secretary Betsy DeVos. DeVos told a congressional committee yesterday that she was "troubled" by the report and she launched an investigation as a result. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., questioned DeVos about accreditor ACICS Thursday during a House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Department of Education's 2021 budget request. The Education Department kicked off its investigation on Monday with a letter sent to ACICS. An investigation by USA TODAY and the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., found no evidence of students, faculty members or classrooms at Reagan National University early this year, even though it was accredited by ACICS.