POLITICS | Thu Nov 17, 2016 | 7:37pm EST

Congress could undo Obama-era student loan relief

By Lisa Lambert | WASHINGTON

The U.S. Congress could as soon as January start to dismantle President Barack Obama's transformation of student loan rules by blocking freshly minted regulations designed to help students who say they were defrauded by for-profit colleges.

The new measures, which lay out loan relief procedures for the students, were issued by the Department of Education just days before the election. That is recent enough to allow the new Republican-led Congress to disapprove them under a 1996 law called the Congressional Review Act. It gives Congress 60 legislative days to reverse regulations with a simple vote.

Republicans opposed the rule when it was proposed. Lamar Alexander, who chairs the Senate committee on education, is considering introducing a resolution that would overturn the so-called "Borrower Defense" rule, according to a spokeswoman.

Even without a legislative reversal, president-elect Donald Trump, who ran on an anti-regulation platform and started his own for-profit school, could instruct agencies to be more restrictive in how they interpret this rule and others aimed at easing student loan burdens.

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