The Biden administration has now canceled loans for more than 1 million public workers
The Biden administration has now canceled loans for more than 1 million public workers
A student loan cancellation program for public workers has granted relief to more than 1 million Americans — up from just 7,000 who were approved before it was updated by the Biden administration two years ago.
TIL Americans spell cancelling with one L.
3Certainly nice that Biden has come around to enforcing the full provisions of the original 1994 law granting public service workers loan forgiveness (which was then amended several times under Bush and Obama). But the headline seems to suggest he's personally responsible for these loan cancellations, when he's simply no longer trying to tie the loan forgiveness up in bureaucracy like under prior administrations.
Incidentally, a big overhaul of the student loan forgiveness program was advanced back in 2021, when Democrats had full control of both branches of Congress. But it was killed in a pair of Democrat controlled committees under VA-3's Robert C. Scott and MA-1's Richard Neals.
15A necessary comment like this would never make it in the awful Reddit version of this sub. This place feels like the real Reddit I used to use before 2016.
7Pretty disingenuous to suggest that the Biden Administration hasn't been working hard to cut through the bullshit red tape those previous administrations created to erase this debt.
They took it to the goddamn Supreme Court. The Biden Administration. I know that wasn't for PSLF specifically, but they're inextricably related.
And then to blame Biden for the votes of two no name reps?
6Biden Administration hasn’t been working hard to cut through the bullshit red tape those previous administrations
In several cases, he's been contributing to it. Biden has routinely promised reform through paths he knew in advance to be dead-ends - fighting pitched battles in court and advocating hopeless charges through the legislature. Meanwhile, he left more straightforward paths to debt forgiveness underutilized. Specifically, the provisions within the 1965 Higher Education Act grants a presidential administration, via the Education Secretary, authority to "enforce, pay, compromise, waive, or release" government-held federal student loans. The Higher Education Act provided the authority for President Donald Trump and Biden to pause student loan debt payments during the coronavirus pandemic.
They took it to the goddamn Supreme Court.
They could have simply struck the debt from the record and allowed Republicans to try and reinstate it. Instead, Biden's bureaucrats dragged their heels, allowing the Fifth Circuit to predictably hold up the decision and the six-vote SCOTUS to quash their efforts.
And then to blame Biden for the votes of two no name reps?
Two committee chairmen. One of whom was the head of the Ways and Means Committee, second only to Appropriations as the most influential committee in the House.
2
The coverage is infuriating. It would be like having headlines about Biden sending checks out to millions of households (and media like Fox News calling it an expensive handout) when tax refunds start going out every year.
We shouldn't be treating it as special and noteworthy when the executive branch faithfully executes the laws. Instead, we should be focusing on how fucked up it is that the previous administration ignored the law and its constitutional duty in order to pointlessly screw over people.
11We shouldn’t be treating it as special and noteworthy when the executive branch faithfully executes the laws.
"Biden reverses out Trump policy of denying claims under the Public Direct Loans Act" would have made for a far more accurate, more compelling, and more politically engaging headline. Sadly, we're going to pretend he's just doing a Debt Jubilee out of the goodness of his heart, rather than fulfilling the terms of the contract that lenders agreed to when they took lower-paying public sector jobs for 5-10 years.
7
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