It’s time for another episode of Student Loan Debt Forgiveness, brought to you by the federal government! Is it just us, or is it feeling a whole lot like Groundhog Day? ♻️
Well, let’s see what happened!
Here are Five Fast Facts on the latest attempt at student loan forgiveness:
- 🔍 Program History - The program used to forgive the debt (Public Service Loan Forgiveness, or PSLF) was originally started in 2007 but had only been used for a few thousand people up until recently. In the last couple of years, however, over a million people have had their debt wiped out. The idea was to benefit government workers after they’ve made 10 years of payments on their own.
- 🪄 Magic Wand - Earlier this month, the Magician-in-Chief waved his magic wand and wiped out around $4.5 billion of federal student loan debt for over 60,000 public service workers. Poof!
- 🤯 Big Picture - In total, about $175 billion in student debt has been wiped out over the last four years, benefitting almost 5 million Americans. 💨 The national debt would say otherwise, but who are we kidding?
- 🚫 Just Say No - Opponents of the program say it unfairly benefits college educated folks who are much more likely to be able to afford repayment. Since it uses taxpayer money to “forgive” that loan debt, it’s basically using money earned by lower income and non-college educated workers to pay off the debts of higher income earners. Kicking the poor while they’re down…?
- 🙈 Sheer Coincidence - Some are also pointing out the fact that the latest round of forgiveness is taking place just weeks before a very tight election in which the candidates have very different ideas on how the program should look in the future. Move along, there’s nothing to see here…
🔥Bottom line: As we’ve said before, it’s obviously a great thing for those who have their student loans wiped out, but it also raises some serious questions about whether the program is fair or not. The timing of it also makes one wonder, and not in a way that makes it hard to connect the dots.
Do you think student loans should be forgiven like this?
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