We’re not retreating, we’re advancing in an alternate direction.
“You take out a loan, you pay it back. Period” – Rep. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, commenting on his partisan stance against relief of student loan debt*
* – more than a dozen representatives took PPP loans between $80k and up to $4.6m, all of which were forgiven.
For the record, I paid off my loans but that doesn’t mean this decision isn’t a slap.
What is now yesterday’s news, the SCOTUS took the side of Nebraska et al in the case against student loan relief. In summary of the 70+ page statements of opinion, they ruled against using the HEROS act to forgive student debts in amounts between $10-20k for millions of borrowers. The use of HEROES cited the Covid pandemic as national emergency.
The same pandemic sparked PPP (paycheck protection program) loans, which I will grant were designed to be forgiven if used for the express purpose of keeping businesses solvent during mandated closures. The justification for this was a national emergency.
Student loans also have some forgiveness programs built into them for careers of high need in things like education… a field I happen to hold a degree in. Let me tell you, especially for those of us who lost jobs in a housing collapse (which could probably also qualify as an emergency, but who is counting), stipulations like 10 consecutive years of employment in a high need area while making payments make those kinds of promises to cancel debt very hollow.
PPP cancelled $760 billion of loans. That’s right, we collectively ate the bill of more than 3/4 of a trillion bucks. Around .2% of those loans were denied forgiveness. Any loan of less than $2 million were granted safe harbor. Businesses of basically any size or kind kind of just got money for free.
Meanwhile, people who could have benefited a lot from not having $10-20k of debt, with a heavy burden of it in the form of interest, were denied that forgiveness. Total cost IF everyone eligible participated? Around $400 billion.
Here’s the thing that’s wrong: our government is bailing out businesses and not helping people. Pell Grant recipients, the ones slated to receive up to $20k in loan forgiveness, have to display exceptional financial need to qualify. A college graduate earns 84% more on average than those with a high school diploma alone, and more than $1.2m over their working lives. Don’t pretend that they have an option when it comes to what they signed up for. The choice was poverty.
I hope anyone reading this knows the opening of the Gettysburg Address, but there’s something you need to understand about it that is far more important. The ending. “…that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Our government is not of the people as long as special interests control which candidates receive enough funding to run successful campaigns.
Our government is not by the people when lobbyists backed by industry write the laws.
Our government is not for the people when we choose to side with business and not with the people in who has debt forgiven.
Lincoln’s America is long dead.