More than 45 million borrowers collectively owe approximately $1.6 trillion, according to the Biden administration, which tried to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for tens of millions of eligible borrowers. The Supreme Court killed the program in June.
We all know this, but it’s important to know who to blame.
The Constitution says we pay our bills, so Biden could have told Congress to get fucked and figure it out. He’d rather keep a generation of indentured servants though, so here we are.
No, no it doesn’t. Feel free to quote the part you think does and I’ll be happy to explain why you are wrong. But, the US Constitution says nothing of the sort.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
Agreeing that a debt exists and agreeing to pay back a debt are two different things. The budget doesn’t argue whether the debt exists, just how and when it will be payed back. It is the difference between “Yes, I owe you $100, you’ll get it back someday.”, and “Yes, I owe you $100, and I’ve budgeted to pay you $20 a week for the next 5 week until we’re square.”
The consitution guarantees the first part, but doesn’t help much with the second. However, without the second part everything grinds to a halt.
Yes, I owe you $100, and I’ve budgeted to pay you $20 a week for the next 5 week until we’re square, but I don’t like what you might do with that money so I’m closing up shop and going home, good luck with everything
Biden didn’t have to cave, he chose to. He said this thing that I said was a top priority for my campaign isn’t a top priority for my administration. And politically he’s going to pay a penalty to the faction of his coalition to whom forgiveness was a top priority.
The 20k would have forgiven roughly 400 bil in loans. When that was shot down, Bidens admin kept quietly forgiven 5bil here, 8 bil there, which has now risen to 136bil and counting.
It’s not the 400bil we hoped for, but 136bil forgiven is far, far more than any admin has ever done to relieve student loan debt.
That doesnt even take into account how they doubled the minimum income limits that affect how much you have to repay on an income based plan, given a complete and free exit out of default, retoractivly approved people who should have had them forgiven, on and on. They fixed so many bullshit aspects of repaying the debt and have gotten basically zero credit for it because its complicated and not sexy like “20k!”
Read the fuck up on what good they have done and i think you’ll be suprised.
Read the fuck up on what good they have done and i think you’ll be suprised.
I understand what they’ve done. But Biden didn’t promise to “do something.” He promised broad forgiveness. And it was clear that many Dems were going to hold him to it. He shouldn’t be surprised he’s not getting credit for half measures, especially when he had the power to keep student loans deferred.
Biden did not promise broad forgiveness on the campaign trail, he said he was open to it. He made no promise at all, much to the irritation of progressives.
What his admin did was 100% pushed for broad forgiveness anyway, in the only way possible. Since he couldn’t get it nby law done due to the GOP in the house and senate, he used the executive power he was granted by law, but the GOP supreme court found a flimsy excuse to stop it. How is that Biden failing in anyway?
He did have the power to keep them deferred, but he had to give that up to prevent a ugly government shutdown. He made a concession, because in a divided government that is something you have to do to keep the government working.
My loan that should have been forgiven was not I blame Biden because he just shurg and moved on like it never happen. Fuck him. If not for Trump or current gop runners he get my vote.
I mentioned this before, but if you’re running into issues with your student loan servicer (in the USA), you should submit a complaint here: https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. At a minimum, my experience was that submitting the complaint was quick and easy.
Some of these student loan companies are lying to borrowers, screwing up basic financial transactions, delaying payment processing, and generally operating in bad faith and in adversarial fashion. Making complaints may not do much of anything in the immediate sense, but in theory when enough complaints get recorded, eventually it will reach a point where it can’t be ignored (I know, you’ve got a bridge to sell me).
Plus, if it ever does come down to some kind of remedy being provided to affected borrowers, having an official complaint on file will probably help you with making a claim.
Having said that, it seems like the complaint system is overall pretty crumby. My complaint was sent directly over to the loan company’s customer service folks to handle, it wasn’t handled by anybody on the government side that I could tell. And no surprise, the loan company investigated itself and concluded that it had done nothing wrong. But don’t let that discourage you, it’s still worth it to report.
I wish I knew that three years ago. I had a Perkins loan with Heartland ECSI. At the beginning of COVID, they kept screwing up how much I owed them. I would log in a few days before payment should have been due, and it said I owed them $0. So I thought this loan was on the same thing my Stafford loans were on, where I owed no payment temporarily due to COVID.
I log in a few days later then it says I owe my normal payment + late fee and it says I am overdue. I call their customer service and I explain the situation. The lady seemed to not believe me. “No, it says you owe X amount. I would not have said 0.” Given that I caught this fast enough, if I paid it now it wouldn’t have affected my credit. I just paid the payment plus the small fee because I did not have the energy to fight due to dealing with the world’s crisis and my own added problems at home.
The next month, I see that it says I owe nothing again. Well, maybe they finally got the student loan pause stuff figured out. Nope, same thing. Not knowing if I was just going nuts, and factoring in my intense burnout, I just paid off the whole thing. Fortunately it was not much, but enough that my savings for a down payment was wiped out. I really could have used that money but for a finance company to just screw up so badly on a simple thing I just did not want anything to do with them any more.
Gotta fight the system somehow. I just hope others see this, report issues, and share the link/info with others. Maybe next time you see a post or discussion about USA student loans, you’ll share the link as well.
I’m fortunate enough that all the fucked up shit that my student loan servicer did wasn’t going to break me, but plenty of others are in situations where it could have had significant negative impacts. Even 5 years ago, if they’d have pulled the same stunt it would have been tough to adapt. So, that’s part of the reason why I like to share that link and encourage folks to use it.
Most definitely, will spread the word when appropriate. I want to hope it will do some good, but I have my doubts. I figure the worst that could happen making a report would just be a small waste of time so why not try.