Alan Grayson: “My amendment would require the Secretary of Education, in coordination with the IRS, to conduct a study on the…”

“My amendment would require the Secretary of Education, in coordination with the IRS, to conduct a study on the feasibility of using individual income tax returns as the primary form of application for Federal student financial aid applications. Personally, Mr. Chairman, I see no reason why American families are required to submit two exhaustive overviews of their financial situation to the Federal Government each year if they have a family member who is seeking a student loan. Individual tax returns provide a complete picture of the taxpayer's financial situation. Why should they also be forced to fill out a secondary onerous financial aid form to the Department of Education as well? In the past few years, the Department of Education has built an IRS data retrieval tool into the financial aid application form in order to reduce the amount of time spent completing the form. It is my hope that we can take this feature a step further. I support efforts to streamline the financial aid process. I think that using one form already required of all income-earning Americans is the best way to do it. My amendment today would simply ensure that Congress has all the information it needs in order to accomplish such a transition. I urge my colleagues to support this effort to streamline the student aid process. I reserve the balance of my time.”