President Biden announced Friday that his administration is forgiving $5 billion in student debt for another 74,000 borrowers, marking the latest round of debt cancellation since the Supreme Court voided the president’s student loan forgiveness program.
Mr. Biden said that of the borrowers who can receive relief, nearly 44,000 are teachers, nurses, firefighters and others who are eligible for forgiveness after working 10 years of public service. Almost 30,000 of those who will have their debt wiped clean have been repaying their loans for at least 20 years, but did not get the relief they earned through income-based plans, the president said.
With the latest round of student loan forgiveness, more than 3.7 million Americans have had their debt erased under the Biden administration, Mr. Biden said.
It’s insane that they made 5b off of just 74k people in the first place
That’s nearly 70k per person. For education. That’s…that’s greed on an evil level
Yeah, now that you mention it, that’s fucking nuts. On average, $67,500 worth of outstanding balance for these people who went into public service. That doesn’t even take into account what they’ve already paid in principal and interest over the years.
Edit: it’s actually $72,892 per person being forgiven for people that have worked in public service for more than a decade.
That’s just about exactly what my wife owes and she’s 2 years away from PLSF freedom. fingers crossed
PS - I paid off my loans and I hope y’all get all yours forgiven.
I feel like education should be free for everyone, especially people in public service because that is usually challenging work and often well below market pay.
And that’s the balance after paying it off for a decade or more.
Thanks, Reagan.
Careful, you might accidently summon him. No one knows the exact incantation to bring him back and frankly I’d rather add “reanimated corpse of Reagan appointed to state department” to the 2025 bingo card.
I thought you had to turn off the lights in the bathroom of a Better Business Bureau, hold a copy of The Wall Street Journal between your legs, and say his name backwards three times fast whilst flapping your arms like a chicken.
Or is that how you summon the ghost of Alan Greenspan? It all blends together after awhile.
What’s insane is this is barely a drop in the bucket…
There’s over 1,770 billion in student loans debt.
When people say 1.77 trillion, it might not be immediate how little a few billion is to the larger issue.
But it’s only around 0.2% of total debt. Probably less because the 1.77 trillion is rounded, and at this scale that’s what 5 billion is. A rounding error they don’t even include that digit when talking about the total amount.
Let’s do all of it, and put in place a solution for all future student loans. They are robbing us blind right now, and costing future generations a chance at a debt free life.
He did do a lot more! I mentioned it in another comment a week ago, but look into what his save plan does. Lowers costs, lowers interest, increases forgiveness, etc. etc.
Save plan lowered my effective interest rate to around 2%. I’ll still have to pay a lot over the next 20 years, and if the tax bomb is not removed it will be another 100,000. However my cash flow is much improved and how much I pay total has decreased drastically.
Still fighting with my student loan servicer to set me up on the plan correctly, but that is a different can of worms. The servicers need to have their contracts nullified for how terrible they have been.
Definitely better than a kick in the teeth, but it’s a shame the Supreme Court nixed the bigger loan forgiveness plan. I’m glad to see Biden is still trying to live up to his promise as much as he can given the obstructionist Congress and Supreme Court.
Here in Australia, our student loans are given and managed by the Australian Tax Office, and while they technically don’t accrue interest they are “indexed” according to inflation (CPI specifically) once per year, every year. Our repayments just come out of or income like regular income taxes - that means that the repayments are tax-deductible too. We usually get indexed around 2-3% per year but last year it was almost 8% which hit really hard. Most degrees also fall under the Higher Education Commonwealth Support (HECS) program which drastically reduces their total cost too.
Yeah, but that’s progressive…
We keep electing democrats that think fixing something at once would be too disruptive.
So they stretch the smallest amount of progress as long as they can, even if that doesn’t make up for damage Republicans do.
Its been like 80 years since moderate Dems told FDR that it was too soon for universal healthcare and Americans had to wait a few more years to make sure it’s a good idea.
And they’re still fucking saying they need to look into it more. It’ll never be time. Student Debt relief shows every indication that it’s going to be the same thing.
I’m not sure why this comment is so controversial. It’s exactly what’s happening. We’ve been talking about this now for forever and almost nothing is happening. It’s wonderful that 74,000 people get some relief but that’s a drop in the ocean. I want it badly but I’ve almost accepted the fact that it’s probably not going to happen.
Lots of moderates want to keep copying the Republican party, even the part where no one is allowed to question any politician who has the right letter next to their name.
They think it’s better to live with the problems and not talk about them let alone solve them.
Which is pretty much the whole problem.
You’re allowed to ask questions. You just don’t like the answers.
In this case, the answer is that debt forgiveness is happening, but you weren’t paying attention.
There’s 1.77 trillion in student loan debt…
https://www.usatoday.com/money/blueprint/student-loans/average-student-loan-debt-statistics/
Do you think enough is being done?
Especially when every year a shit ton of students enter college into the same shit show?
I couldn’t find a source for how much total Biden has forgiven, but I’d be shocked if the percentage doesn’t start with a decimal point.
Before you can forgive $1.77 trillion, you need to forgive $136 billion.
80 years ago moderates said before we could all have universal healthcare, we should settle for orphans, widows, and those with disabilities.
And that in a few years we might get it for everyone else after they looked into it.
Couple generations later and moderates are still saying they’re looking into it…
Why do you think Student Loan debt will be different?
74,000 in addition to the 3.4 million people who already had student loans forgiven. That’s not nothing.
This may be a shock to you, but there are other branches of government in the US. One of which is not elected and that’s the one that recently struck down Biden’s HEROS plan that would have eliminated $460B in student loan debt.
Good thing we elected a career politician who said his decades of Senate experience meant he could get Republicans in the Senate and house to vote for progressive legislation…
Oh, that’s right…
I forgot Dems had the Senate, House, and presidency for 2 years…
But that highly experienced career politician told us trying to change even a single politicians mind (even if they were in his own party) was an impossible task so he wouldn’t even try.
Welp, at least we’re not running him again since the whole reason he said he was the man for the job turned out to be something he was lying about…
That would seem like a terrible plan
he could get Republicans in the Senate and house to vote for progressive legislation
He said he could work with Republicans to get bipartisan legislation passed. And he has, including the Electoral Count Reform Act.
In addition to bipartisan legislation he has also passed progressive legislation, but as everyone expected that was along party lines.
Forgiving 5B in student debt VS inciting riot to overthrow our government…
bOtH sIdEs aRe tHe sAmE!!!
well one side didn’t go to college so this is basically a nothing burger to them
BUT IF I DID AND I ALREADY HAD PAID IT ID BE JUST AS PISSED AS I AM NOW THAT I CANT DRAG ANYONE ELSE DOWN
DRAG??? WHAT ARE YOU SOME KIND OF FREAK?!
Right. It’s like saying my dad died of cancer, so your dad should also die of cancer.
No, let’s improve shit for everyone. Fuck that outdated mentality.
One of them has a long history of ruining pretty much everything he touches.
neither is good.
democrat - joe biden is funding a genocide
republican - trump is trying to overthrow the government
trump is more like “we have genocide at home”
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Dude I vote as hard as I can but I’m not a Republican so I only get to vote once.
do not think trump would be better
better if enough people either voted someone other than the red and blue corpos or nobody at all in protest
biden’s list of achievements on behalf of the american people or lack there of is totally relevant to me and a lot more people I’d wager
maybe I would be able to participate and vote if biden had lived up to his campaign promises or lived up to supposed “democrat” values for that matter
democrat and republican corporate slime have kept americans down
My lender has been sitting on my application for PAYE since September. And I doubt it ever gets processed as it won’t help their bottom line.
Biden should have left the debt pause indefinitely and fight judges who ruled against himself. The courts allow delays. This would gain him back a lot of support and it would cost him zero political capital.
Yep. He told Republicans he would stop pausing it to pass funding for the government.
He should have lied like they would.
I mean, yes?
It’s time to fucking play hardball with these creeps instead of this milquetoast turn the other cheek bullshit.
They want to play the game like that, so they are setting the ground rules. Acting like we have to keep one hand tied behind our back during a fight with them is fucking stupid. Get that arm out and throw sand in their fucking eyes.
Pocket sand!
The thing is, we don’t need to stoop to make this even. Just start making the courts somewhat even again and arrest these clowns. We don’t have to be peices of shit because they are.
In principle I agree. In practice idk.
Look out we got a tough guy
For a second I thought this said Biden is forgiving $5 and assumed this is the onion.
I might be included in one of the recent rounds of forgiveness (the one where if you have under 12k in loans taken out and have kept up with payments for over 10 years). I’ve paid off all but about $250 of it, and even making the minimum payment, I’ll have it paid off in around 4 months anyway. Unless they move at breakneck speeds by government standards, by the time they actually get everything processed, $5 sounds about right. Which hey, if that ends up being how it goes, I get a free ice cream cone on Uncle Joe. Can’t complain about that.
Not a bad move from Biden here.
It is according to Lemmy purists. If an action doesn’t tick all their boxes and perfectly solve a complex problem then fuck you.
Interesting how the far left and far right agree on so much. Yeah yeah horseshoe theory it is still interesting to see. The far right wants student loan debt to be treated like child support or harsher the far left wants anything short of full debt annulment, but both agree that compromises are bad.
I would much rather Biden gets the wins he can get vs going after ones that he can’t, failing, and nothing is done.
Good call, but we need to fix the underlying problem that is the ridiculous price for higher education. With every piece of information online I find it very hard to believe we can’t get average annual tuition down from 20k a year.
Averages out to be 67,567.56 per.
Cool, but will that solve anything? Greedy universities still win in this scenario.
Greedy universities
Banks, thousands of other kinds of predatory businesses that prey on students: “Ha, yes, yes! ‘Geeedy universities,’ that’s the ticket!”
It’s the universities that charge these astronomical prices for tuition, not the banks. So yes, greedy fucking universities.
It’s both. The loans are absurdly special status, so the lenders are incentivized to give out more and bigger ones, and the availability of more and bigger student loans means universities can charge more and take in more people
It’s a very tangled system with all sorts of perverse incentives
It’s a small measure but it’s better than nothing. We need free public universities but that’s outside of a presidents unilateral authority.
“It’s not perfect, so we should do nothing”. FFS…
recognizing an issue exists and taking some steps towards acknowledging it and helping people
“Right, but it doesn’t solve everything so it’s completely worthless.”
Paying education loans even after 20 years of working in public service? Seems like a failure of the education system. I’m from Europe, also been to India a lot on business, and never have I seen anything of this magnitude. You can get a good education even in India for a very nominal tuition fee that middle-class parents are also able to cover without taking out loans. For poor families, it’s virtually nothing in good state universities. The idea is that education will empower even the poor and they’ll be able to get a good job and become tax paying citizens. Not like if you’re poor, we’re still gonna crush the heck out of you with more debt. The latter seems to be the strategy employed in the US. In most European countries, education is virtually free covered by taxes. Of course taxes are high but it benefits everyone in terms of healthcare and education. Is that really so bad? Isn’t it the government’s job to make sure EVERYONE has access to good healthcare and education? Then why does it feel that it is a money-oriented corporation running the country rather than a government?
Sorry, went on a rant there. Whenever I see something like this it just makes my blood boil. Teachers, firefighters, nurses still paying student loans after a decade or two, that’s a failure of the education system right there.
Yeah, the US isn’t a country, it’s a business and it’s people get shafted hard for this.
Wow, thx Joe!
Forgive it all or STFU
Remember when he did that and Nebraska Republicans sued and the supreme Court blocked the debt relief by 6 to 3 thanks to the 3 Justices Trump appointed.
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“We are taking steps to help people in a shitty situation”
“WELL WHAT ABOUT THOSE OF US NOT IN SHITTY SITUATIONS HUH?! WHAT DO WE (I) GET?!”
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why should we be obligated to pay their debt? What are you on about?
What are you on about? They’ve paid their debt, they’re still paying the interest on the debt. These are people in the public sector, went into debt to help make society better, and the people profiting off that debt are profiting a little less.
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“They made a poor choice when they were 18 to… (hang on, let me check the link) become teachers, nurses, and firefighters. They should pay for that choice for the rest of their lives!”
Not my problem
Beautiful thing about this bitchy little response is it works for your original comment of “What about people who decided to go to a cheap college? Do we get any money?”
Not my problem.
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I was 19 when I decided to goto college because I figured out what I could afford. My parents begged me at 18 to go to a over $20k/year school, I absoulutely refused. My whole tuition cost me $15k for a full bachelors degree in Computer Science.
Not my problem
Maybe they are in a shitty situation too and that’s why they are asking? It fucking sucks when you’re drowning to see you don’t qualify for a life preserver.
Maybe they are in a shitty situation too and that’s why they are asking?
Maybe they should be asking for help with their shitty situation then? Instead of seeing someone getting helping and saying “Why should I care that shitty situation? They aren’t ME!”
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“Why should I care that shitty situation? They aren’t ME!”
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That’ll really cut down the 1.7 trillion dollar student loan problem.
So you’d rather he do nothing? I know it is a drop in the bucket but let’s not let good be the enemy of perfect.
I’d rather he do more, but my expectations aren’t high considering Biden was critical in creating this problem:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/02/joe-biden-student-loan-debt-2005-act-2020
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/
Either way, don’t expect me to cheer on a jackass who barely makes a dent in a problem he created.
Should just let it trickle down from the billionaires like usual smh
