Attorneys general from 17 states addressed a letter to congressional leadership on Friday boosting a call for President Joe Biden to immediately cancel up to $50,000 in federal student load debt for borrowers as part of pandemic relief.
Initially focus on forgiveness on the first $10,000, which frees up 30% of borrowers. From there, MAYBE consider additional incremental steps. $50k is too much to start out with IMHO.
So because some people have been victims of predatory for-profit colleges, we need to wipe out everyone’s debt, no matter how accrued and where?
Do they even know how to Attorney General, or are they just playing at it?
You don’t give compensation to people who are not the victim of the crime you’re prosecuting.
[“Student debt cancellation can substantially increase Black and Latinx household wealth and help close the racial wealth gap,” they wrote]
Now THATS “cancel” culture.
I’m for 50K, but, regardless of the amount, the interest part has got to go.
The group suggested on Friday that borrowers were plagued by insurmountable debt amid a vicious churn of what they called “predatory for-profit colleges that lure students with false promises.”
I think we need to aggressively prosecute the predatory schools and individuals that preyed on students. Something I’m certain Trump and DeVos failed to do, and to enact stringent regulations on them going forward. We need to reestablish the connection between actions and accountability.
One thing in the letter that may be responsive to your question:
Borrowers deserve and desperately need relief from their Federal student loan burden, and they need that relief immediately. The current options for borrowers have proved to be inadequate and illusionary. For example, only 2% of borrowers who applied for loan discharges under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program have been granted a discharge. In addition, efforts by our Offices to obtain student loan discharges for defrauded students – to which students are entitled under existing law – have been stymied by the U.S. Department of Education for years.
Which is a great reason to improve the function of the program, now that we don’t have a billionaire stymying things, and a total red herring as to the need to wipe out everyone’s debt.
A bit of a dodge:
“I’m prepared to write off a $10,000 debt, but not 50,” Biden said […], adding, “I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing the pen.” […] Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that the plan would require counsel from the Justice Department to make a recommendation on Biden’s legal authority.
“In the meantime, if Congress moves forward and sends him a package that provides $10,000 of student debt relief, he would be eager to sign that,” she said.
It’s one thing to ignore the point made about urgency and insist that DOJ needs to weigh in — but obviously this applies only to the use of executive power.
Whereas if Biden “would be eager to sign” a bill that writes off $10K in debt, where’s his argument for not signing a bill that writes off $50K?
And for that matter, where is Congress’s legislation that would write off $50K?
Removing student debt from bankruptcy protection is the real problem.
That needs to be reversed. End of problem.
… is certainly not explained in the letter, except maybe in terms of urgency.
Slight correction, they’re not talking about a bill, they’re talking about an executive order. To that end, I don’t understand why one would be hunky-dory and the other not, if you can write off a dollar, you can write off a million using the same logic.
But he’s been pretty clear that he ain’t touching 50k in an EO and taking all the political heat from it for bailing out people who went to private universities and exclusive places and all the stories that would come along with that.
Media would have a field day reporting on this or that politician’s or millionaire’s kid who just got the middle class saps to fully or mostly fund their education bill, while they just got a cush job on Wall Street.
Yeah, most people don’t realize that the “common sense” solutions are already part of existing law and have been shown to be utterly inadequate to the problem. Just like “workfare” laws are designed to deny welfare to people who qualify, our current student loan discharge laws are designed to deny relief to student loan borrowers.
The group suggested on Friday that borrowers were plagued by insurmountable debt amid a vicious churn of what they called “predatory for-profit colleges that lure students with false promises.”
These need to go – yesterday.
Why not transfer the federal-loan debt, from students they ripped off to them, and then send out the repo man with a vengeance?
And any owners who profited from fraud need to see the inside of the Greybar Faculty Lounge.
(Also, from a purely political perspective – and there’s no escaping the politics of this – Dems need to handle the student-loan issue with extreme care; otherwise, they hand GOP demagogues a red-meat narrative of “enriching the elite at the expense of the uneducated”.)
No, they’re talking about a mish-mash.
For example, from the AGs’ letter:
We therefore urge [Congress] to adopt Senate Resolution 46 and House Resolution 100 calling on President Biden to act swiftly and to discharge up to $50,000 in Federal student debt owed by each and every Federal student loan borrower.
As noted, there is a certain amount of dodging going on.
That’s entirely a matter of execution within the respective department.
Guess who owns all of the executive branch departments.
Before we just hand out stacks of $100 bills to passers-by on the street corner, maybe we should look at how to improve the current regulatory framework and oversight, and maybe do a bit of housecleaning where there are responsible folks for these programs who are reluctant to do their jobs.
Emphasis added:
Or, how about just shutting down the crap for-profit colleges, prosecuting their leaders and enablers, fining them, and using the money to reimburse the students who were too stupid to understand that these for-profit “universities” are a scam, just like the relative who died in Africa and left you a fortune if you will just wire $10,000. This kind of blanket tax give away is just feel-good stupidity and it’s how Dems. lose the tax-paying voters.
Yes to that. We should consider student loan debt as a symptom of a corrupt system.
Treating symptoms without treating the underlying corruption is pointless.
Right, hence my questions:
Brilliant. Transfer the debt to the scam “universities,” their owners, professors, administrators, and anyone who profited from them.