Pocan’s Bipartisan Effort to Simplify Application for Student Aid Passes House

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (WI-02) released the following statement after the Simplifying the Application for Student Aid Act of 2016 passed the House. Earlier this year Rep. Pocan and Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) introduced the legislation, which makes President Obama’s executive action to allow for the use of Prior-Prior Year tax data for students permanent – helping students make timely financial decisions about their education.

“This bipartisan legislation is an important step towards making college more affordable and will help streamline the process for students applying to college,” said Rep. Pocan. “Allowing students to use prior years’ tax data means a student can apply for financial aid at the same time they apply for college. This ensures students get information about financial aid, which will help them make their college choice, much earlier.”

SIMPLIFYING THE APPLICATION FOR STUDENT AID ACT:

· Allows students to use family income data from two years prior to the date of the FAFSA application. This process will help students apply for financial aid earlier so they can better prepare for their college costs.

· Improves the ability to link between the online FAFSA form and income tax data stored by the Internal Revenue Service to automatically input income data into the FAFSA form, reducing the need to manually input information that often prevents low-income students from applying for aid.

· Strengthens the integrity of federal financial aid by providing institutions more time to verify the income of their students.

· Additionally, the legislation will also direct the Department of Education to develop a mobile app for the FAFSA. This will allow millions of Americans who do not have broadband access, but do have internet connectivity on their phones to have access to an electronic version of FAFSA.

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