Look At These Butt-Heads Voting To Roll Back Student Debt Relief! What A Bunch Of Butt-Heads!
Yay for the veto.
A Republican-led bill to undo President Joe Biden's Student Loan forgiveness plan — already on hold until the Supreme Courtkills it carefully considers its merits and rules to kill it later this month — passed in the Senate yesterday, although Biden has already promised to veto it. Senate Republicans were joined in the 52-46 vote by two right-leaning Democrats — Joe Manchin (D??- Gob Coal) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) — as well as right-leaning former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona).
A very unhappy former constituent of Sen. Tester tweeted thusly on hearing the news:
“hey @jontester how about you either a) stop voting against student debt relief (while ALSO voting against raising taxes on dead millionaires) or b) stop texting me asking for money. You've texted me like five times in the past two days. Pick a lane.”
— Rebecca Schoenkopf, Wonkette. (@Rebecca Schoenkopf, Wonkette.) 1685715186
Previously!
What Good Arguments Will Supreme Court Ignore In Student Debt Relief Case?
In addition to killing off Biden's debt-relief plan, which would forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loans for folks who received Pell grants while in college, or up to $10,000 for borrowers who didn't, the bill would have immediately ended the pandemic pause on repayment and interest for most federal student loans. The latter provision was somewhat redundant anyway, since the loan repayment pause will end on August 30 as part of the debt limit bill that Biden will sign today. Even without legislation, the pause was inevitably going to end because the pandemic state of emergency as ended; the debt ceiling bill just makes good and sure that the Education Department stops being nice to borrowers ASAP.
Manchin, always on the lookout to pander to the Right, called the debt relief plan "reckless" because it would add to the deficit in very bad ways that aircraft carriers and oil subsidies do not. In a statement, Manchin said that giving any relief to folks burdened with student debt would force "hard-working taxpayers who already paid off their loans or did not go to college to shoulder the cost." Considering that without the debt relief, many borrowers will default anyway, it's not exactly the most logical stance, but again, it plays well to class resentment against educated snobs who used a student loan to get vocational training. But you know how it is with "education" — they probably sneak some Marxism in there while training people to be dental technicians.
The bill was able to pass in the Senate with a simple majority because it was introduced under the Congressional Review Act, which empowers Congress to overturn executive branch rules and regulations it doesn't like. The CRA was also why the bill could go to a vote without being brought up by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
In a statement last month, the White House made clear that if the bill passed, Biden would veto it. The statement said the bill was "an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief, " adding that it would "weaken America's middle class."
Nearly 90 percent of the relief provided by the Department of Education would go to Americans earning less than $75,000 per year, and no relief would go to any individual or household in the top 5 percent of incomes. Americans should be able to have a little more breathing room as they recover from the economic strains associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Reiterating the argument the administration made before the Supreme Court in February, the White House noted that Congress gave the Education Department the authority to forgive loans during a national emergency, and that previous administrations have done exactly that, so get outta here.
Now, we just have to wait and see what the Supreme Court decides. Given the Court's tendency to do whatever it damn well pleases regardless of precedent, we're not getting our hopes up too much, damn it. But hey, the Supremes have surprised us before.
As Yoda Said, There is Another
Also Previously!
I Got My Student Loans Ready For Joe Biden's Big Income-Based Forgive-A-Thon And You Should Too
Finally, we'll add that the text of the bill Biden plans to veto, and the upcoming Supreme Court decision, only concern the one-time debt forgiveness program Biden announced last August .
That's kind of a big deal, because as we mentioned a few months back, there's also a separate, long-extant loan forgiveness program for folks enrolled in income-driven repayment plans (IDR), under which borrowers can have the balance of their loans forgiven after making payments for 20 years for undergraduate loans, or 25 years for grad school loans. That program is unaffected by the upcoming Court ruling because it was created by Congress and predates the Biden administration.
There's also the better-publicized Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which forgives student debt for teachers and other government workers after they've made payments for 10 years. (Although not in practice.)
Even better, the Education Department has improved the terms of those programs to make up for some longtime shady behavior by private loan servicers, who would often talk people into deferring their loans (which continued to accrue interest) instead of letting them know about income driven repayment plans. You can find more details in our earlier article or straight from the studentaid.gov website . The upshot is that the Ed Department will be reviewing millions of accounts and adjusting the time necessary to qualify for forgiveness of loans. More than 3.6 million borrowers will get at least three years of credit toward fulfilling their obligation, and many will have their loan balances wiped out by the adjustment. The adjustments will also apply to those PSLF loans, too, and to a lot of loans taken out by parents for students.
To qualify, you may need to consolidate your existing loans into an IDR plan, and here too there's some terrific news: The initial deadline to qualify had been May 1, but the Education Department has extended thatto the end of 2023 .
For more information, and to start the process, check thestudentaid.gov website here. And if you're completely at sea, the folks at the Education Department's Student Aid help desk (1-800-433-3243) are astonishingly smart and helpful.
[NBC News / Politico / StudentAid.gov ]
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Imagine the boost to the economy that loan forgiveness would create. Most all of the people with loans are middle class. Forgive their loans and they will spend a lot of the money buying things. When you give tax cuts to the rich, they squirrel it away. We all know this.
The one missing component of student loans is uniform bankruptcy rights that are supposed to be guaranteed with all other consumer loans. Without bankruptcy rights restored? People will be begging Joe Biden, our next presidents for cancellation and what we will get is what we've already been measly promised. The promise fell extremely short of the actual promise to cancel all federally held loans. These loans? They are unconstitutional, they are a weaponized and government-profiting scam that continues to wreck the lives of borrowers. You know, the government profits massively off of student loans, especially defaulted. These 'rehabilitation', or 'loan consolidation' offers are only going to worsen your lives down the road. Services that successfully enroll you in one of these programs get a huge commission off of you as a result of selling your loan off.....then default happens if you have defaulted already again....it is a never-ending mess that needs major overhaul. The loans, prior to covid were not being paid by over 60% of all borrowers. Now imagine this scenario, when they try to turn these loans back on Sept. 1, 2023? This number will be more like 85-90% or more. We hope that it will be more, because no one should continue to feed this sinking ship, catastrophically failed lending scam.
People are fed up, tired, infuriated by how poor policy changes to student loans over decades have made education further out of reach, UN-payable and jacked up tuition. Without uniform bankruptcy rights (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 4), people will never be able to receive any meaningful or full cancellation, or anything that will truly put a stop to predatory and usurious schemes. Those collection agencies are just drooling at the prospect of turning these loans back on without consumer protections. It is their golden unicorn, their saving grace, their golden egg, whatever you want to call it. Do you want to continue supporting a weaponized, lending scam that...yes is wrecking states like Texas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina? Texas has nearly hit 200 Billion dollars in student loan debt that is making borrowers lose their sleep. This far exceeds the state budget!
Over half of all borrowers are republican and independent, more borrowers are over the age of 35 not under. The false narrative that student loan borrowers are these elite, lazy, kids fresh out of high school living in parents basement...Non-sense! The media lies, the GOP is literally attacking their own constituents, people of color, elderly, minority groups and more. If this is a ship they want to cling onto and perish on? By all means, the GOP are politicizing an issue that is serious, a threat to our nation and is obviously NOT an individualistic problem. Individualism is a myth by the way, but that is for a different conversation.
If our president were to fully cancel all student debt? That debt would be zeroed out, plain and simple. The taxpayers would not be affected...at all! No money would be drawn from the treasury, none added to the national debt....you get it now? This is the cheapest and most effective way to stimulate the economy. People have paid and paid and paid on their federal debts but the interest only nullifies any effort made! If you want to continue to support a failed, lending scam by finger wagging at the borrowers? That is your sinking ship to cling onto because no one is going to save you, you work for the colleges, you work for the dirty billionaires and you have sold your soul for money and selfish conquest. DO not support this lending scam, it has to end. If you want more information on this and reference look up 'student loan justice' on google, you will thank me later.