A bipartisan bill co-authored by Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Elizabeth Warren pushes back against states that suspend professional licenses from workers who can't pay back their student loans.
Health care workers, nurses in particular, are frequently targeted for license revocation for not keeping up with student loan payments. In January, the Florida Department of Health announced that more than 900 health care workers were subject to losing their professional licenses over the past two years for defaulting on their student loans. Although many of those employees were able to work out repayment plans, at least 100 had their license to perform their job taken away.
And although Warren is running for president in 2020, both senators have signed on to several bipartisan bills in the widely divided U.S. Senate. A representative from Rubio's office told Newsweek that despite the Senate's partisan divide, legislation to help protect struggling student loan borrowers is an issue of common ground between Democrats and Republicans.
Rubio previously supported the exact opposite bill in the Florida state legislature that allowed student loan providers to take more punitive action against broke borrowers, including suspension of professional licenses. As Newsweek recently reported, Tennessee Republican Senator Lamar Alexander introduced a Senate bill in February calling for wage garnishment to come directly from overdue borrowers' paychecks. But Alexander's bill also called for increased accountability on behalf of private and public colleges to justify offering specific types of academic degrees.