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.

  • dill@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    “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.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Same reason mortgages can have “early payment penalties”.

        They can’t anymore

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

    • Janoose@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Burn_The_Right@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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@lemmy.world
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      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@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

        • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one
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          1 year ago

          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@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

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

      • shottymcb@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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      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@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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?

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

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

      Yes. Why would you do that?

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.works
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        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@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee
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      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.

      • 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.