I want to be positive, hopeful, you know optimistic. There’s student loan forgiveness, yay! The largest climate bill ever was recently signed WhoHoo! The IRS is getting beefed up to go after the folks avoiding their taxes, I’ll be! Some cops in some places are being held to account, Hallelujah! And I just read, just now, the Secret Service (Didn’t even know they did these types of investigations…) just recovered $286 million in fraudulent Pandemic Loans. Apparently they along with the DOJ, the SBA and ‘other offices’ have launched 3,850 investigations since 2020. The result, $2.3 billion was recovered and returned to state unemployment insurance programs. This was all reported by the AP. Way to go!
So should I get my rose colored glasses back out and clean the smudges? I want to, I really do. But every single one of these positives carries negatives that on closer inspection could cancel out the benefit it was meant to address. Like John Oliver’s segment on the corruption behind the carbon offset deal. Great idea in theory, but not practice.
In this ranty post I want to focus on this student loan deal. This bit of relief is a godsend for many people struggling to make ends meet. For others, even $20,000 is a drop in the bucket that changes little. The limitations in the bill makes the whole process convoluted and difficult to understand. The basics include:
- The loan can’t be in default.
- If you got Pell grants you are eligible for $20,000.
- Without those grants the relief drops to $10,000.
- Early income below $125,000.
There are a lot of other provisions, this is the meat and potatoes part. But doesn’t that logic seem a bit flawed? Under this scenario a student gets more money if they qualified for Pell Grant money. While a student who didn’t qualify for the program and instead got through without that assistance, gets less? The White House’s fact sheet on the bill touts the logic that if a student wasn’t eligible for Pell grants the student’s family probably makes more money so they don’t need as much relief. I just don’t get it.
Also, whether the relief is $10,000 or $20,000, that doesn’t even cover one full year at a public University. Business Insider reports, the average cost of the 2021-2022 school year, with expenses, was $22,690. Costs being the same for four years, gives a grand total of $90,760. Top that off with predatory interest rates and low paying salaries, and we have the recipe for the disaster the US finds itself in; 1.75 trillion in school loan debt, 48 million borrowers, with the average four-year borrower in 2019 exiting with $37,200 in Federal loans on top of other loans.
Bernie Sanders did a town hall with nurses at Temple University Hospital. There he heard from the 120 nurses who collectively have $7 million in student debt. That’s a lot of cabbage! One of the nurses stated she has $88,000 in student debt that keeps going up every year because she can’t even afford to pay the interest accruing on the original loan amount. As an extra punch to the gut, this particular nurse doesn’t qualify from the public service loan forgiveness program because she is a union organizer. How can that even be legal?
The right, people like Ted Cruz, like to say all these people with student loan debt are poor losers who can’t function in society. In his latest rant he smugly expressed his ‘concerns that slacker baristas are benefitting through this program. That’s not his true concern though. What really has his undies in a bunch? More people will vote, and not for his party. He feels the program presented a “real risk” for GOP candidates this year. His words, “And you know, if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station, Or just send in your mail-in ballot that the Democrats have helpfully sent you—it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.” Just wow.
My oh so humble take? Why couldn’t we have just taken the full measure. Cancel all of the loans and even more critically overhaul the student loan program to prevent a repeat. Why are student loan interest rates at 6-7% even while mortgage interest rates were 3% or under? Why are union organizers exempt from public service relief programs? Something needs to be done with ever increasing tuition costs as well, but that is a whole different complicated set of stuff.
Of course, this relief program has many on the right jumping up and down raging about our country becoming socialist by helping people with their student loans. Please. After what has come out about the PPP loans? 13 Republican congress people had around 19 million dollars of PPP money forgiven, no need to pay any of it back. Don’t forget, the bailouts of the banks, the airlines, and the millions given as subsidies to the oil and farming industries. The problem isn’t the ‘socialism’, the problem is who it is helping. The one thing Republicans hate is large voter turnout, and they aren’t too crazy about young people voting. This move by Biden along with a few others may very well motivate young people to vote – I can’t believe I have to say this – THAT IS A GOOD THING!
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