Starting next month, borrowers enrolled in SAVE who took out less than $12,000 in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years will get their remaining student debt cancelled immediately.
Starting next month, borrowers enrolled in SAVE who took out less than $12,000 in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years will get their remaining student debt cancelled immediately.
Any amount of assistance is a good thing but doesn’t this seem like a pretty low impact program? I graduated from college 10 years ago and at the time I was in school $12,000 was maybe one year of tuition and book fees. I went to both a community college and an in-state public university. I imagine most people who took out loans and finished their degree borrowed more than that over 4 years. If I’m reading this announcement correctly that means most people don’t qualify for assistance and those that do are either those who had some outside financial assistance or those who never finished their degree. I think we can do better than that.
Yes, it effectively helps people who went to community college and wound up in a low-income job or disabled.
For those people it’ll be a pretty high impact thing, so that’s really nice!
As long as Democrats keep trying and this isn’t a “we fixed everything forever now shut up” announcement, I’ll hold my peace on this. At least until they show the first sign of letting up.
Right. Use this as moving the line to the next step. If this much help is palatable to the ones who typically object to doing things for those in need, then maybe chipping away at something else will be too. It’s better than trying to help most everyone and getting shot down.
And it totally sucks that we live in a world where we have to play that kind of game to get anything.
This is what we can do despite the obstruction of the incrementalist wing of the party, not out of some triumph on their part.
Next step: several states are making progress on free community college or even two years at public universities. Hopefully we can do something at the federal level too, so everyone can get two years of college debt free
In my experience, when something happens at the state level such as cannabis legalization, increased minimum wage, legal abortion, etc., we see a “got mine, fuck you” attitude from the Blue State Eloi that get the benefit toward the Red State Morlocks that don’t. Why would an Eloi State senator stick his neck out to get a benefit his constituents already have for some contemptible flyover Morlock? Advances for blue states make nationwide advances less likely, and nationwide advances are the only hope anyone in a red state has.
Gone are the days when we can do something like we did with gay marriage when the states can do the right thing and get the Supreme Court to equalize the right thing nationwide by applying the 14th Amendment.
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Due to the SCOTUS ruling, any debt cancellations have to be pretty limited in scope to survive legal oversight. I honestly really respect Biden continuing to chip away at the issue where he still can instead of just giving up after the SCOTUS loss. It doesn’t magically solve all problems for all people, but for the people affected, this is a massive help.
Due to the incorrect, illegitimate, political SCOTUS ruling.
Just feel a need to add that emphasis.
The SCOTUS’s entire “major questions” principle is entirely unconstitutional. They do not have the right to selectively decide when laws do and don’t apply based on their own subjective judgement on the effect of those laws.
Congress passed the HEROS act. It is and remains law. It gives the DoE full authority to modify or cancel student debts during a state of emergency, which we were in. There is absolutely no reasonable question that the Biden administration had the authority to do that cancellation that the SCOTUS ruled against. The SCOTUS was legislating their preferences from the bench. The legal backflips they did claiming the partial cancellation was neither a modification nor cancellation is absolutely absurd and shameful.
Revive the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill.
I used to think that as well: how does this help when it’s such a low amount. However that means it helps more people and it means proportionally more help who needed loans for even community college or public universities.
Those of us fortunate enough to have reason for larger loans to be manageable don’t get proportionally the same benefit but that’s only fair