National Public Radio (NPR) recently ran a poll to determine what Americans think about student-loan forgiveness. More than half the respondents favor President Biden’s plan to forgive $10,000 in student debt per borrower. Among people with outstanding student loans, 84 percent support Biden’s debt relief plan, and 68 percent want the Biden administration to forgive … Read more
President Biden signed the Bankruptcy Threshold Adjustment and Technical Corrections Act yesterday, and congressional leaders pat themselves on the back. According to Senator Chuck Grassley, one of the Senate bill’s sponsors, the new law will remove some hurdles to the bankruptcy process and “assist small businesses and working families to weather financial hardship and emerge … Read more
President Biden promised college borrowers $10,000 in student-loan forgiveness when he was on the campaign trail. He has yet to deliver on that promise. Some progressives urge Biden to forgive more student debt. The NAACP said, “$10,000 is not enough, We’re calling on our elected officials to cancel federal student loan debt with no means-testing.” … Read more
President Biden is flirting with a massive student-loan forgiveness plan–$10,000 in debt relief for 97 percent of all college borrowers. The Washington Post, perhaps America’s most progressive newspaper, urges him not to pull the trigger. “Biden could ease the burden on the genuinely disadvantaged in a number of more targeted ways,” the WP editorial board … Read more
Earlier this week, the Department of Education wiped away all student debt owed by more than a million former students who attended one of the Corinthian Colleges campuses. The cost? About $5.8 billion. Since his administration began, President Biden has approved $25 billion in loan forgiveness for 1.3 million student borrowers. That’s a lot of … Read more
Earlier this week, Inside Higher Education, reported that college enrollments have declined for five straight semesters. In the spring 2020 semester–when the COVID epidemic began–the nation’s colleges enrolled 17.1 million students. Today, 15.9 million Americans are in postsecondary classes–a decline of 1.2 million students. Some states saw more significant declines than others, and some saw … Read more
Is everybody having fun? According to the feds, the economy is booming: millions of new jobs and rising wages. The defense industry and its stockholders are getting rich from the Ukraine War, and college students are likely to get all their student-loan debt forgiven. Ain’t that great! In Baton Rouge, where I live, thousands of … Read more
Our government spent trillions of dollars responding to COVID, and just about everybody got a little something from Uncle Sam. Sometimes I think my wife and I are the only people in the United States who didn’t get a COVID relief check. For example, 14,000 law firms got Payroll Protection money, ostensibly to help them … Read more
In the 1990s, Wendi LaBorde took out student loans totaling about $75,000, but she could not repay those loans. Over time, interest accrued on the debt. In 2010, the Department of Education obtained a judgment against Ms. LaBorde for approximately $395,000–five times what she borrowed. In 2014, LeBorde received the proceeds from her late mother’s … Read more
The White House is extending the pause on student-loan payments until August 31st–an extraordinary development. By the time this pause ends in September, millions of student borrowers will have been relieved from making payments on their student loans for almost two-and-a-half years. Indeed, as Ron Kline, President Biden’s chief of staff, pointed out: Joe Biden, … Read more
In March 2020, the U.S. Department of Education allowed 37 million student-loan borrowers to pause their monthly loan payments due to the COVID pandemic. DOE extended the payment moratorium several times, allowing all these college borrowers to skip making payments for two years without accruing interest or penalties. This moratorium gave student debtors much-needed relief … Read more
Paolo Bacigalupi’s apocalyptic novel The Water Knife is a tale about the struggle for water in the desert Southwest. Lucy, one of the novel’s lead characters, is an investigative reporter trying to understand the major power players who use the law, violence, and vigilantes to control water for their various constituencies. At some point, Lucy … Read more
Around 2,500 prisoners sit on Death Row in American prisons. Nearly 700 condemned men await death in the Golden State of California. A couple hundred are housed on Death Row in Texas, the Lone Star State. And Florida–the Sunshine State– has 330 prisoners who’ve been sentenced to die. How long do condemned prisoners sit in … Read more
Betsy DeVos, the Wicked Witch of the Midwest, was perhaps the most despised member of President Trump’s cabinet. As Trump’s Education Secretary, she coddled the for-profit college industry and (in my opinion) bungled the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. Nevertheless, in a speech delivered in November 2018, DeVos revealed to the nation just how … Read more
Student Debt Strike, an online Reddit community, advocates for a mass student-debt strike as the best way to pressure Congress to grant wholesale student-loan forgiveness. I support this group’s goals. Economist Stephanie Kelton and others have argued persuasively that forgiving all federal student-loan debt would stimulate the economy. Relieved of burdensome student loans, more than … Read more