How Biden is continuing to cancel student loan debt despite Supreme Court ruling

Although the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program in late June, his administration has found ways to cancel more than $48 billion in debt since then.

The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs, which are limited to specific categories of borrowers, such as public-sector workers, people defrauded by for-profit colleges, and borrowers who have paid for at least 20 years.

These programs are separate from the rejected forgiveness plan, which would have canceled about $430 billion of the $1.6 trillion of outstanding federal student loan debt all at one time.

The Biden administration has been granting student loan forgiveness through these existing programs on a rolling basis since coming into office and has discharged a total of $127 billion for nearly 3.6 million people to date.

eran_morad,

Brandon gets my vote.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

He’s cancelled student debt for a precious few, unilaterally, several times.

I’m not sure why we’re pretending he needs Congress or SCOTUS, except that a lot of people just want to pretend he’s magically powerless to fulfill his campaign promises.

lolcatnip,

He’s not pretending, you moron. He already tried forgiving student loan debt through executive orders and the courts blocked him.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

He doesn’t need the courts.

He’s unilaterally done this multiple times.

Please stop lying to yourself.

lolcatnip,

Learn how the government works before you make a fool of yourself again, you ignorant child.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

It’s always going to be a little surprising to me watching you all lie to defend your oppressors.

Honytawk,

Still, rather an oppressor that at least tries to help than one that doesn’t even do that.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

at least tries to help

What you call ‘at least tries to help’ seems to be rather performative to me.

mctoasterson,

The executive doesn’t have limitless power, regardless of what various bell-ends on Lemmy seem to believe. And if you think that it should, I’d caution you to do a brief thought experiment and imagine what things will be like when someone with whom you disagree occupies the same office.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

If people could eat Democrats’ excuses, no one in this country would ever go hungry.

capt_wolf,
@capt_wolf@lemmy.world avatar

What kills me is that these rocket surgeons are blaming Biden for these forgiveness programs when the public service loan forgiveness plan was enacted almost 20 years ago by George Bush…

Either they’re that history blind or they’re desperate morons, praying the rest of the uneducated masses will just blindly go along with whatever they claim is true… Probably both… Who am I kidding!? Of course it’s both!

This should have been a fact checking article. Instead it’s just perpetuating the narrative that Biden is doing something wrong.

Patches,

Yes but the PSLF had an abysmal approval percentage up until Biden. The department of education did everything to deny, deny deny.

capt_wolf,
@capt_wolf@lemmy.world avatar

And the loan agencies certainly don’t want you to know about it either! Mine played dumb until I cited the section about my job, then suddenly it was “Oh that, right! We’ll get you set right up!”

My last payment is next year and I just can’t wait to see what they’ve fucked up because of covid…

Patches,

Bruh just pray that Biden wins cause if he doesn’t the PLSF goes back to deny everything

neptune,

Clearly only a republican administration is allowed to break the glass during an emergency

AtariDump,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2eb5ef2e-43e7-4f30-b67b-2c99afdf6d87.jpeg

MisterD,

All these students needed to do is create a fake company and get a PPP loan. Then use tha money to pay their student loan. Lots of conservatives got PPP loans and any unpaid PPP loans were forgiven.

/s

msage,

You put that ‘/s’ one sentence too late

mojo,

It’s not joeover

OldWoodFrame,

The cancellations have come through existing federal student loan forgiveness programs

So…is Biden “doing” anything? If it’s just the same programs…I don’t see why we would be saying “Biden is continuing to cancel debt” at all, really. The question is if the admin is using executive orders to make forgiveness easier or something.

Monument,

This article helped to explain what Biden is doing to forgive student loans.

JustZ,

Well, that’s because you don’t know enough about this to have an opinion. The Biden administration has streamlined and made automatic processes that used to have to be manually done by the borrower, many of whom did not even know they were eligible for. One of the administration steps was to identify from existing records all of the borrowers who qualify for these programs but were apparently unaware of it.

krellor,

Yeah the biggest win was the change to repayment plans. If you get on an income based repayment plan and make your payments for 20 years, the rest will be forgiven, and the monthly payment can be $0 if your income is low enough. That sounds like a long time, but it makes it so these are not forever loans anymore, with more obvious financial benefit to students to pursue a degree.

JustZ,

I’m pretty sure you actually have to be paying each month to qualify.

medgremlin,

If your payment is $0 based on your income, staying in appropriate contact with your loan servicer and maintaining your IDR paperwork means that those “$0 payments” each month count towards the 120 (PSLF) or 240 (20 year forgiveness) qualifying payments.

FlashMobOfOne,
@FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world avatar

They wouldn’t have to be forever loans if they weren’t exempt from bankruptcy, but Joe showed up for Corporate America on that one. People are kind of just ignoring that he put his stamp of approval on screwing over America’s college students.

dill,
@dill@lemmy.one avatar

“The Biden administration is trampling the rule of law, hurting borrowers, and abusing taxpayers to chase headlines,” Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement at the time.

I’m trying to understand this in good faith, which is probably a mistake. In what way could this possibly harm borrowers? I literally can’t see a way that you could even imply that.

lolcatnip,

I’m trying to understand this in good faith, which is probably a mistake.

Yes. Why would you do that?

Xariphon,

Never take anything a Republican says as though it were in good faith.

Janoose,
Janoose avatar

Isn’t Virginia Foxx the same piece of shit that screamed at a reporter for asking about the new speaker’s role in the coup attempt?

Just checked, she is. She is engaging in typical Republican double speak and nothing about her argument is in good faith.

SCB,

The more you learn about her the shittier she is. She’s just a truly shitty person. She definitely yells at Wal-Mart employees over shit they don’t control.

OldWoodFrame,

I think she means it’s not fair to the borrowers whose loans are not forgiven, their tax dollars are being used in place of the money that would have gone to repay the loan while they get no benefit.

JustZ,

I know this isn’t your argument necessarily, it’s what she may have been saying, but it is a dumb argument. These forgiveness plans and Joe Biden’s plan to forgive significant debts, are not plans for the purpose of being handouts to the people who get the direct benefit. The purpose is to free up the American economy for young, educated workers, and their families, millions of whom are burdened by debt that will prevent them from ever owning a home or even of having children. And that is not good for our country. So you don’t have to have your debt forgiven under any of these plans in order to benefit from them. It is not good to have our best and brightest buried under six figures of debt right at the time they are starting their careers. It’s counterproductive. They definitely do not do this in China.

TWeaK,

Debt cancellation =/= taxpayer paying off the debt. It’s drawing a line under it, saying that the lenders have already profited their fair amount from the debt and cannot claim any more.

People claiming entitlement to ongoing profit is such bullshit.

RedditWanderer,

Loans aren’t meant to help people. They are meant to generate interest. People who invest in the lenders are technically going to lose money here. But it ain’t you and me investing in the profits of student loans. And if you are, you need a smarter portfolio that doesn’t rely on the world burning.

CosmicTurtle,

If you’re investing, your principal is not guaranteed. Every fucking broker has that written in bold font on their website.

I’m so fucking tired of investors privatizing their profits but socializing their losses. I shouldn’t have to pay some greedy asshole just because they overextended themselves.

ShaggySnacks,

We need to provide welfare to corporations and the investor class! We need to think about them and the children! They all clearly need help unlike those dirty, poors. The poors can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. /s

Fraylor,

God even making me think about the poors just makes this country feel socialist. I don’t like this commie-talk.

GoofSchmoofer,
@GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world avatar

This is something that came to a head in the 2008 recession. Most people, left and right leaning, were not happy with the fact that banks got our tax money, and the homeowner got virtually nothing. This was one of the reasons Occupy Wall Street protests started, and it was one aspect of the Tea Party’s organization with there protest of the TARP Program. Though they were arguing for a different solution, less spending overall.

But this idea that the government is more than willing to throw money at large, “to big to fail”, businesses but are loathed to do the same for the individual was more universal than what is seen today.

Anecdotally I’ve talked with people that have much more conservative views on spending and government debt but the one place that seems to have an agreement is that the American people got screwed in 2008 - 2009. While there are many ideological things that divide people in America I believe that this feeling that the American government is more willing to help out large companies (legally, monetarily, and even militarily) than it is to it’s citizens is more ubiquitous than is played out in the major media outlets.

shottymcb,

90% of student loans are owned by the federal government. They get the interest. Those are the only loans that are eligible for forgiveness. There’s no lenders losing anything.

Burn_The_Right,

Never in history has a conservative entered any debate or conversation in good faith. Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Every word.

We should be teaching our children why we never believe the words of a conservative.

givesomefucks,

Same reason mortgages can have “early payment penalties”.

Paying them off now is less money than if it takes a decade of interest.

Someone should remind the Republicans Jesus was cool with loans, but a Christian who charges interest goes straight to hell. It’s why back in the day most bankers were Jewish and why all the stereotypes about money came into being. Wealthy Christians wouldn’t loan without interest because they loved money more than helping others.

Patches,

Same reason mortgages can have “early payment penalties”.

They can’t anymore

The Dodd-Frank Act in 2014 made them illegal thankfully.

Imgonnatrythis,

She probably thinks it’s teaching them bad habits. These borrowers will probably go on to do drugs and think that they don’t even need to pay their dealers.

Patches,

These borrowers will probably go on to do drugs and think that they don’t even need to pay their dealers.

What is he gonna do, call the cops?

SCB,

how does this hurt borrowers

The GOP believes that every person is a small child and that not paying your loans equates to a moral failure from which you will learn to never pay any debts ever again

Unless they’re business loans, in which case it’s a moral failure of society to not give you free money.

Makeitstop,

OK, arguments I can think of, which I could see being made with sincerity, and that could support the assertion that this is harming borrowers.

  • By continuing to promote the idea of student loan forgiveness, Biden is giving false hope to millions of borrowers who are waiting for their loans to go away when they should be focusing on paying them off as quickly as they can, or refinancing them to make them more manageable.
  • Student loan forgiveness doesn’t help future borrowers, who will be getting just as much debt.
  • Forgiving student loans and setting an expectation that loans will be forgiven takes away what little pressure exists on colleges to keep tuition down.
  • It costs money, which will contribute to the national debt and that hurts all of us, including borrowers.

.

That’s the best I can come up with. And obviously none of that compares to the harm of being economically crippled by student loans, and the relief that forgiveness would mean for borrowers.

And of course, absent from all this is any kind of alternative plan to address the issue. I can understand not wanting to forgive loans without also reforming the system to prevent this situation from happening again. But instead, all they’ve offered is a cap on how much students can borrow, and a bill that would force repayment plans to be on worse terms than the plan the Biden administration had already announced it was implementing.

The only GOP plan that I can recall that actually seemed like it was intended to help borrowers was Rubio’s proposal to eliminate interest on all student loans. So of course it was dead on arrival.

AngryCommieKender,

Just getting rid of the interest would be a huge relief. I don’t mind that I payed back what I borrowed. I do mind that I payed back almost 4 times what I borrowed.

That being said, higher education State Schools should be free. You wanna charge tuition and be a private college, and stop taking government subsidies.

bane_killgrind,

So these arguments are not great, your first one relies on an assertion that you don’t back up

they should be focusing on paying them off

Why should that individual do anything? Is it more optimal? The situation we are in is lots of people can’t afford to do what they “should” do.

The other thing they don’t address is where this money goes. What benefits do the post secondary institutions reap from higher and higher tuition fees? Is there utility in continuing that access to funds or are caps on profit and spending overnight things that we should consider?

tacosanonymous,

I also like to brag about giving less than ten percent of what I promised.

cybersandwich,

It’s 127 billion dollars more than any other president/administration has ever done.

3.6 million Americans and their families have had a significant burden removed, and that doesn’t even count the new repayment rules that limit the impact student loans borrowers.

He’s still moved the needle on a major pain point for millions of Americans. It warrants credit where it’s due. If you only criticism is that it wasn’t more, then write your representatives and vote accordingly.

tacosanonymous,

I have. Sadly I’m in a deeply red area and my reps have made it clear that I can go fuck off.

njm1314,

Well then you should sympathize with having a conservative roadblock to democratic action.

tacosanonymous,

And I am.

SpaceNoodle,

By pinning the blame on others?

krellor,

What more can he do without Congress? He tried to act unilaterally through executive action and it didn't work. He told the house and the senate, back when there was a (slim) Dem majority in both that he needed them to act and Schumer, AOC, and others kept publicly insisting he had the authority to act through executive action.

So blame the folks who failed to act when they might have had a chance to get it through Congress.

HubertManne,
HubertManne avatar

yeah and actually he has it now were payments are based on income and interest can't increase the principle more than what was initially borrowed. Even if someone does not qualify for the other areas the 20 year one keeps this from being an albatross.

tacosanonymous,

Don’t worry, I have enough blame to go around to all of the neoliberals.

Ensign_Crab,

Schumer, AOC, and others kept publicly insisting he had the authority to act through executive action.

This looks like you’re blaming Schumer and AOC for suggesting that Biden use an executive order instead of the centrists that made sure that student loan forgiveness never saw a vote.

krellor,

Schumer is the senate majority leader, he is the person who can bring things to a vote in the Senate. AOC should have focused her lobbying on the chamber of Congress she is a member of to bring a vote on a bill. Or even draft a bill for committee. Not just exhort the president to a course of action that was unlikely to proceed. I'm sure they did it either because they knew they didn't have the votes, or to protect Dems in vulnerable seats. Either way, they shouldn't have pushed their portion of the governments responsibility to the executive.

Ensign_Crab,

Schumer is the senate majority leader, he is the person who can bring things to a vote in the Senate.

And he knew that thanks to centrists, he didn’t have the votes.

AOC should have focused her lobbying on the chamber of Congress she is a member of to bring a vote on a bill.

Was it Pelosi or AOC who decided which bills come to the floor? I get that you want to blame AOC for centrists’ resounding success in blocking loan forgiveness, but it’s a stretch at best.

Biden is still trying and not giving up after the very first setback. It’s no wonder members of his own party are primarying him from his right.

krellor,

As far as I'm aware, Pelosi didn't go in front of the media and online and repeatedly tell the public that Biden could use an executive order. If she did, then I feel the same way about that as the others I listed, who I did see out in the media making those claims.

Ensign_Crab,

Ok. Well, I guess anything you need to do to blame AOC.

krellor,

I don't blame AOC for student debt not being forgiven. I do blame Congress as a whole, and I find fault in Schumer, AOC, and others who shifted blame to Biden. Even at the time numerous independent legal experts had said that it would be unlikely to succeed through executive action, and so all Schumer and AOC did by publicly calling Biden out was fuel misplaced blame like the person I replied to. I think their energy could have been better spent drafting legislation and publicly calling on Congress to bring a vote to the floor, which I think are fair criticisms.

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