Biden’s already eliminated a ton of it. I’m glad to see he’s still going on this despite the Supreme Court ruling, and I don’t even have student loans.
I have a good job and paid mine off already and I’d still vote like hell to get other’s forgiven.
As opposed to the conservative/regressive approach: “I suffered, therefore you should too. Fuck trying to make things better for people who aren’t me.”
I’m not American and have no student loans and even I’m glad he’s doing it. There might be a common stereotype internationally that Americans are fat lazy assholes, but to tell you the truth, the Americans I know or have met have been the absolute nicest people I know. The ones I work with regularly are also crazy hard workers. There’s a lot of potential for good in the US, but oppressive economic systems get in the way for a lot of people and it’s just heartbreaking to see.
I myself would love to live in the US, I’d live a very comfortable life as a software engineer, but I just couldn’t do it to my future children (there’s one well on the way) - the knowledge that they might have to go into debt for medical or education reasons is just too much for me. And while I have a good career, I’ll probably never be truly financially independent to the point I could just handle any unexpected expense regardless of magnitude.
Don’t think of it as either-or. I doubt I will ever retire but if I do it won’t be in the States. I hope my kids go to higher ed and if that happens I am most likely going to push them to go to Germany for it. I have to get dental surgery so the next time I am abroad is when I am going to get it done.
Mine will likely never be eliminated unless it all goes away because I make too much, and that’s totally fine by me. I want as many people to get relief as possible! Public colleges and universities should be free, and student debt should not be a thing. At least not the way it is now.
Like you will be paying it off forever? Or unlikely to be forgiven? Because those both suck but one is unacceptable
I think it’s really worth noting that in the end, the most egregious abuse is the usury. Having to pay multiple values of the principle is the trap most people fall into.
Hey, Y’all Qaeda. Why aren’t you focused on that sin against Gaaaaaaawd?
Interest on student loans is crazy to begin with
If I go to college and get a better job, then the country is already benefitting from a larger tax base from me having a better job than I would otherwise.
So not only am I getting taxed on a larger tax base, but I’m also paying interest on a loan to get the better job lol
I’m getting hit twice
Nobody expected prosperity theology!
I feel happy when someone in this position can say this instead of the ol’ “I did it so you should suffer too” to type logic haha
You deserve relief too. Maybe not all of it but just because you’re one of the lucky few that won the job lottery. Still, everyone deserves an education, especially those who will use it to their full advantage.
Another guy who won the job lottery here. I agree that in principle we deserve relief, but we should be at the absolute back of the line. We may deserve it, but we don’t need it. A lot of people need it. Those tax dollars are better spent on the less fortunate.
I mean, with that relief he could buy more stuff and help keep employment high, or invest his money in an ethical business to spur more job growth… which is more likely if that poster walks the talk. Regardless, college debt is just economic parasitism.
Good. Keep taking advantage of those loopholes.
I definitely sympathize with people in college debt, but this feels like just temporary wins and doesn’t address the real problems. This won’t solve the overpriced cost of education. Forgive debt now, a new crop of students will just go into debt next, right?
We need universities to be completely free, universal single payer health care, drastically cheaper housing to rent and own, etc.
I agree but that would require Congress to do something. Trying to accomplish this through executive actions alone might not actually work, but it at least shows voters clearly which party is willing to take action on this issue, and hopefully we will end up with a Congress that is more in line with the will of the people.
I think this might be my key takeaway. He is wiling to address exactly this problem and might continue in the future. Even if you don’t benefit from it, it shows a clear path he is willing to take.
When someone is having a heart attack you don’t give them a lecture on the importance of diet and exercise.
There is a problem now, solve it. Fix the root cause next.
Also called kicking the can down the road.
If a house starts burning do you try to put it out, or kick the can down the road and let it burn so you can build a new one?
Bad analogy
We let these half measures go through and nothing gets done later because just enough was done to shut the masses up.
Be happy with your bandages. 🤷
NYTimes is walled off. Can’t access. Update: Someone posted the article in the comments below. Thanks!
deleted by creator
Here you go, friend.
President Biden will announce a new effort on Monday to reduce or eliminate student loan debt for millions of borrowers, an election-year attempt to revive his goal of providing large-scale relief for Americans struggling to pay off their college loans, a person familiar with the plan said Friday.
Mr. Biden is expected to preview new regulations by the Education Department targeting millions of borrowers, including those whose loans have ballooned because of accrued interest and others who can demonstrate financial hardship impeding repayment, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the regulations have not yet been formally proposed by the department.
The proposed regulations are set to be published over the next few weeks. Mr. Biden will speak about the effort during a visit to Wisconsin on Monday, which will coincide with an event on student loans with Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia.
The push is a recognition by Mr. Biden and his allies of the disappointment felt by his supporters — especially young voters — when the president’s first attempt to wipe out student debt was blocked by the Supreme Court last summer. The court said that the government exceeded its authority under federal law when it attempted to cancel up to $400 billion in student loans.
Since then, the Biden administration has used existing laws to provide debt relief to smaller pockets of borrowers. Monday’s announcement is expected to eventually reach a larger group, though officials said it would still be more targeted than the across-the-board relief that the Supreme Court already struck down.
Understand Student Debt Relief Under President Biden
Key initiatives. Since he took office, President Biden has had a broad initiative aimed at alleviating the pressure on federal student loan borrowers. Here is where the plans stand:
Income-driven repayment. On August 22, the Biden administration opened for enrollment its new income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE, in which borrowers’ monthly payments are tied to their income and family size. It will enable millions of borrowers to significantly cut their monthly federal payments, eventually by as much as half.
Once the proposed regulations are officially published in the Federal Register, it will still be months before they can go into effect because of a required public comment period. Biden administration officials expect that the new rules are likely to be challenged in court, which could further delay any reductions in debt.
Officials have said they believe the new proposed regulations would be more likely to survive legal challenges because they are based on a different federal law and they are more targeted to people in specific situations. The president’s previous effort was based on the Heroes Act, which allows the education secretary to waive debt during an emergency; the current regulations would be authorized by the Higher Education Act.
Politically, the timing is critical for Mr. Biden as he battles former President Donald J. Trump for another term in the White House.
The president’s popularity among young people, a group that was critical to his 2020 victory, has dropped significantly in the past several years. A December poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena College found that Mr. Biden is trailing Mr. Trump among voters 18 to 29, which is a dramatic turnabout. In 2020, Mr. Biden won that group by 20 percentage points.
Officials at the White House and the Education Department declined to comment on the expected regulations, which were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal.
What you should know. The Times makes a careful decision any time it uses an anonymous source. The information the source supplies must be newsworthy and give readers genuine insight.
Learn more about our process. But details about the proposed rules have been discussed and debated for months in a series of public hearings with stakeholders. Transcripts of those meetings and drafts of the proposed regulations provide a road map for the administration’s announcement.
On Feb. 22, the department released a draft of a regulation titled “Forgiveness due to likely impairment of borrower ability to repay or undue costs of collection.”
The proposed language in the regulation said that the U.S. education secretary could waive student debt when it was determined that “a borrower has experienced or is experiencing hardship related to such a loan such that the hardship is likely to impair the borrower’s ability to fully repay the federal government or the costs of enforcing the full amount of the debt are not justified by the expected benefits of continued collection of the entire debt.”
That regulation listed 17 factors to consider when assessing whether a borrower qualifies for the hardship waiver. Those include: household income and assets, student loan balance, total loan balance, age, disability, high cost burdens for essential expenses such as health care, and “any other indicators of hardship identified by the secretary.”
On Dec. 11, discussions about potential new regulations included a proposal to allow the education secretary to waive student debt when the total amount owed by a borrower exceeds the original principal on the loan because of accrued interest.
“The secretary may waive the lesser of $20,000 or the amount by which a borrower’s loans cumulatively have a total outstanding balance that exceeds the original principal balance of the loans,” said the proposed text for the regulation distributed at the meeting.
The actual regulations published are likely to differ, at least slightly, from the ones discussed in the public meetings, the person familiar with the discussions said. But Mr. Biden is expected to embrace help for those with financial hardship and those with high balances because of accumulated interest.
I will maybe purchase a home before I’m dead. I don’t have a useless degree. In fact, it’s an in-demand field and the salary was considered respectable when I began. Cost of living increases have eaten away at that. But my other choice was to continue to be an assistant at poverty wage. So when the higher salaries and specialties are gatekept by a huge monetary sum you either get a bunch of people with some debt or only the privileged may access knowledge and a brighter future. We have to decide as a society which one we want and stop loathing our neighbors for the system they didn’t create.
Try harder if you want to win a second term. Your liberal base doesn’t show up and you lose.
I am totally for free college. If we can’t agree on that, the price should at least be capped or seriously reduced. It seems kind of convienient that the topic is coming up again in an election year. The problem is that both parties are beholden to the military industrial complex. With military recruitment at an all time low, they can’t afford to just “give it away” (give it away, give it away, give it away now). The Rethuglicans will use their bullshit “bootstrap” argument, because they only give a shit about a problem when it affects them directly. The Demohypocrites will wring their hands and pretend to try to do something while ceding ground to Repubs so they can make a show of it. It’s the corporations that own both parties, and nothing is going to change until we kick these entrenched douchebags out on their asses.
Also, look how easy it is for Congress and POTUS to approve billions for war in Ukraine and billions in money and weapons to keep the genocide in Israel going (with all of the afforementioned hand-wringing, of course).
Trying is not enough sir
Instead of reinforcing bloated college tuition, why not say fuck it and put a ceiling on all tuition?
If that happens, I believe there will be some idiots protest it. Something like “I paid for my full tuition, and so must you!”.
More like a lot. The “fuck you, got mine” mindset is unfortunately a common outcome of the “rugged individualism” propaganda perpetuating America.
Are you talking about Biden’s efforts specifically or more generally? Because Biden is constrained by:
- Having to act in the framework of what existing laws let him do as Congress won’t pass anything.
- Most colleges are regulated by individual states and the federal government’s power to regulate them is very limited.
You’re not wrong. But there are still tools available at the federal level. States also have control over their legal drinking age, but if they want federal assistance for maintaining their roads it has to be 21.
You could set a functional tuition cap by saying Federal Student Aid is only available if tuition is <$15k/year
Clearly Biden has an infinite money supply and could go around Congress at any moment. Why doesn’t he just pay for all of it?
I don’t even get the logic here
Why is this college tuition money so hard for Biden to obtain when he is currently going over the head of a different branch of government to get large amounts of money. What’s stopping him in this specific case? What works in the other case?
Not sure what you’re getting at. when did he go outside of the legislative branch to get money?
Making poor financial decisions should not be rewarded.
Where is the utility in keeping people in a never ending cycle of student loan debt?
It does suck, but people who go to college know how much they’re going to pay. If anything, they should consider starting at a community college. Specialized schools (e.g. nursing schools, pilot school, etc.) often come with higher costs, but people need to weigh the potential benefits against the expenses. Community colleges offer more affordable options for foundational coursework before transferring to a specialized school if needed. Also, a significant portion of students already recieve some form of financial aid.
Not really a great analogy though, is it, since Biden wasn’t the one who pulled the football up the first time. His administration has also been working constantly, using every way they can, to forgive as much student loan debt as possible. That’s after the SCOTUS ruling.
Say what you will about him, but Biden has shown that, at least on this issue, he’s doing everything in his power to get rid of as much as possible. And he’s already changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of borrowers… Again, after his plan got shot down.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they get this done in time for the election… They will try to get the timing right though so it motivates people to vote.
He did pull the football. He campaigned on $50k forgiveness and then negotiated down to $10k after he was elected.
No, he did what he said he would do, and the Supreme Court stopped it from going into effect. The conservative establishment sued the government to stop it from happening.
MOHELA, one of the apparent plaintiffs on the lawsuit, is on record prior to the court case saying that they had no interest in suing and that they don’t know why this lawsuit was being brought in their name. There was no standing whatsoever, the case shouldn’t even have been heard.
Regardless, no, Biden didn’t pull the football. In fact, his efforts to forgive tens of millions of dollars since the SCOTUS ruling, in addition to this article, indicate that he’s still planning on following through on that campaign promise.
I’m glad he didn’t just give up after he SCOTUS ruling. Every other President that’s been in office during my lifetime would 100% have given up after losing that case. Especially given that the benefits tend to skew younger, and a more cynical, real politik person would cut their losses, claim they tried, and move onto sometime that they think will net them more votes.
Let me break this down for the simple minded:
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Biden proposes $50k in student debt forgiveness.
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Republicans fight him to make it $0.
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Supreme Court sides with Republicans.
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They force Biden to make it $10k just so it will pass.
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“Biden pulled a Lucy on his voters!”
Yeah… I can’t tell the difference anymore between conservative idiots and actual real tankies. That’s how close many of their talking points have gotten… I guess if one thing has been consistent throughout modern history, it’s that political groups on the left will always sabotage their own success with infighting on petty minutiae and making perfect the enemy of good. Yes, I know the Democrats aren’t “on the left” etc. etc. etc… I’ve made my point. We’re always our own worst enemy.
That’s simply NOT true. When the Republicans are bulldozed out of the way, Democrats go full speed ahead. Look at California. Newsom has gone absolute gangbusters with the GOP helpless in his path. We’re a bullet train of progress here!
Note: So to briefly pause here: I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I may have gotten a little carried away with this comment, it just kind of wrote itself and I couldn’t stop. I’m not even sure how much it pertains to your comment lol sorry. It’s long, so I wouldn’t fault anyone for skipping the rest. That said, I do think it makes some important, albeit possibly already well known points.
What did I say that’s not true? There is a long and storied history of leftists failing to accomplish meaningful change on a large scale due to petty infighting (for example, New Jersey exists) and self-imposed purity tests…
My comment assumes that the one I’m replying to is sincere and arguing in good faith. This is the internet, so you never know. Either way, this comment isn’t just for him, it’s for anyone who may see this thread and are curious about whether or not Democrats are progressive or vice-versa. So who knows, maybe someone else will read this and learn something new lol you never know…
My initial thought was that you seem to be making the mistake of conflating “progressive” with “democrat”. Are there progressives that caucus with the Democratic party? Sure (though begrudgingly). And why do you think they do that, rather than starting a third party of their own? After all, these neo-libs are just as bad as conservatives in their minds. Why do you think that progressive politicians in the US choose to caucus with the 'dem like 98% of the time? And leftists just cannot help themselves. We have some compulsion to zero-in on that often arbitrary 2% difference, Ultimate gatekeeping. Rather than celebrating the 98% of views we agree on, it is decided that cooperation is impossible.
It wasn’t always just Bernie out there on a limb; Some of us are old enough to remember people like Dennis Kucinich (and his disproportionately hot and cool wife lol), Mike Gravel, and last, but absolutely not least: Howard Dean, a "progressive-adjacent Democrat who was set to potentially win the nomination. And I can hear it already/again: “he’s not a true progressive because xyz, so he doesn’t count as a one!”
In all seriousness I truly believe Howard Dean’s career was deliberately assassinated because at the time, he was running the DNC like a well-oiled machine— his ‘fifty-state strategy’ was showing very real results. The GOP saw a future where they’re fighting for their lives in just about every state, knowing full well that they have no actual policy to run on. Republicans were threatened by this already, and the thought of him becoming President absolutely terrified them. So they assassinated his career for the dumbest reason ever (with the media and center-left complicit, of course),
What we need are more progressive politicians who are willing to actively caucus with the Democratic party. Once you get a large enough contingent, they will begin having actual power in the party’s policies.
So to get to my original main point before this comment transformed into something entirely different:
Given we must accept reality as it is, and given that that the reality is that we only have two parties is this country, we really have no choice:
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a lukewarm neo-liberal party that has had no real choice but to follow the Overton Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) further and further right or face extinction and ultimately cede power to the other party. Have you see what the “opposition party” looks like in places like Russia, and or,
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literal racist, bigoted, homophobic, transphobic, fascists (their dumbasses don’t need to know the definition of something to be it) who are working tirelessly to take away basic rights
I am aware of Israel/Palestine, and I am 100% against Netanyahu’s campaign of genocide. Which is why voting for Donald Trump, who wants to give Netanyahu carte blanche (literally told him to “get it done faster” in contrast to everyone else in the world telling him to chill the fuck out).
If you give a single shit about the plea of the Palestinian people, and haven’t just latched onto a cause for attention or whatever, then you would understand why you need to vote for Joe Biden.
The reality of political party dynamics is incredibly complex and nuanced. The Democratic party in particular is so diverse not just of ethnicity, but of beliefs, opinions, etc. I mean look at this, I think the data speaks for itself: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/09/u-s-congress-continues-to-grow-in-racial-ethnic-diversity/
Here is my main point (I think):
I must emphasize, THIS IS HOW THE SITUATION IS AT THIS MOMENT. That is, until young progressives recognize that perfect is the enemy of the good, and that they are able to collectively change the ethos and platform of the Democratic party. And that’s how you get a progressive party in a two party system. Problem is, young people don’t vote.
Again, apologies for the crazy long comment, this wasn’t planned. I hope at least someone reads it. Cheers!
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Regardless, no, Biden didn’t pull the football.
Yes he did.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-50000_n_602d49c6c5b67c32961aab8b
Not sure how the supreme Court is “negotiations” but sure
But he also was able to find other ways to forgive debt through other legal means
Here’s Biden pulling the football.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/539139-biden-balks-at-50k-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/
Assuming you actually believe what you’re saying here, then you’ve got a lot to learn about how the world works.
I know enough about how democracy works to know I’m not voting for the guy again. We’re not fucking around here. Make material compromises with leftists or progressives or lose to MAGA. Make a choice.
We’re not fucking around here.
Lol how old are you? This your first election? Maybe Democrats will make concessions to progressives when we (and young people in general) fucking show up to vote consistently. And not only in presidential races.
Until then, you’re naive if you think you can make ultimatums like that… It’s laughable.
What I was referring to about learning how the world works, was learning how things actually get done in reality, not in your books on poli sci theory.
First off, Biden isn’t a king. The president does not have carte blanche to just eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars in personal debt with the swipe of a pen. Frankly, I would not want that power vested in one person. If he were more authoritarian-inclined, he might try (though authoritarians seem to never use that power to help anyone buy themselves and their buddies), and there are several potential outcomes of that, and none of them end with him getting the thing he originally wanted… Nothing happens in this kind of system without compromise (which is why we see the Republicans’ obstructionism works), so yes, $50k becomes $10k.
There is also this thing called “political capital”… I’m not going to waste any more of my time when you probably won’t even read this far…
I know I’m voting for Biden to stop MAGA.
JUST DO IT!
DON’T LET YOUR DREAMS BE DREAMS!
DO IT!
The only thing standing in his way in previous attempts was the Republicans.
