Democrats introduce bill to eliminate student loan interest for current borrowers

I'm sure the GOP will be happy to vote for this one in the house. They were perfectly fine with issuing much more for covid PPP loans and forgiving the loans completely. It's so sad we have such a divided nation. We need to get rid of our first-past-the-post voting system, or it will be like this indefinitely.

With corporations owning politicians, an education crisis, a housing crisis, and the entire country hating eachother it doesn’t matter what voting system you tack on. We need some sort of reboot as a country on many levels.
- It's called a civil war.
Yeah but nuking the filibuster, if that's what you're referring to, would actually be a horrible idea.

If Democrats are a majority, then they will pass anything unopposed, which would be great. Means progress and getting shit done.

But if we end up with Republican majority, we're going to be in a world of shit, very fast because they'd get the same benefits.

Voting matters. Vote trash out.
FPTP is the buzz word everyone likes to focus on. It very much is barely a blip in the system. Ranked Choice wouldn't make third parties viable. It would just spread out the funding and support*. This is why the vast majority of countries where voting is a thing tend to down select to 2-4 viable parties.

The reality is that FPTP is "fine" because we already largely do the run offs at the party level. I voted for Yang (look, he wasn't THAT batshit crazy at the time and he was all for UBI...) and you voted for Bernie. We both ended up voting for Biden in the "real" election.

What we actually need is to get rid of the electoral college. It is an antiquated system that heavily favors gerrymandering and disproportionately favors sparsely populated states. It sort of made sense when results were carried by horseback *2, but not now that the results can be sent at the speed of light. And this largely gets rid of all the broken systems that disenfranchise voters... or at least gets us back to focusing on the more tractable stuff.

*: And, as someone who grew up in a VERY blue state, it mostly just encourages people to do protest votes because they know the person they really want to win will win.

*2: No, it still didn't make sense back then and was mostly a way to ensure that rich white landowners were the main voters
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact
  
  If you live in a state that hasn’t joined yet, you can take action today!
Don't suggest such an unworkable solution. People just need to vote. That's the first step.
- It’s about systemic incentives, blindly hoping for a change in people’s behaviour is foolish at best. First past the post causes the same issues in every country it still exists today, it clear to see. That’s why most of Europe doesn’t use it, and hasn’t for a long time too. The US has an outdated democracy and we all wish you good luck in convincing others to update it.

I don't believe the GOP would ever let this pass but this would help considerably towards getting out of debt, although slowly. The student debt loan relief would have been even better but obviously that didn't happen.

While this sounds good, it's never going to pass. The rich make too much money from the interest.

So does the state.

Next comes the languishing phase, followed by the ineffectual defense, capped off with a bipartisan veto.

“Both sides” at its finest.
They'll wait until after the election to veto it.
While 49 R senators and 1 D senator for 50 total is technically bipartisan, it's incredibly misleading to call it that.
- One at a time, you mean. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rotating villain

I'm all for making college less expensive for students but, as good as this sounds, I think we need to enact some controls on the price of school before measures like this will be helpful. If credit becomes cheaper for borrowers, universities will just raise their prices. The economics are in the universities' favor here and they'd happily absorb more money to grow their administration.

It seems like getting some controls in place might be doable if democrats were to push for the. Republicans might be game to regulate the cost of university attendance since it would reduce the flow of money to the evil leftist universities, but maybe they'd see that as anti-capitalist?

The core problem is one you've narrowed in on: There's a positive feedback loop between schools and lenders to increase costs forever.

Student loan debt is (almost) impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. That shit will follow the student for the rest of their life, until it's paid off or the student dies. This is accomplished by allowing private lenders to make "federally-backed" loans, in which there is a quasi-private lender who is, by statute, able to collect interest on the loan, but has almost no risk because, should the student fail to pay, the federal government steps in, pays off the lender, and assumes the debt, at which point, the student still has to pay, but the lender got their money back, plus whatever interest the student had paid until that point.

I mean, if you were in the student loan business, why wouldn't you lend as much as possible? It's literally free, guaranteed revenue for decades. You'd be stupid not to enter this almost zero-risk business.

Meanwhile, while lenders want to lend as much as possible, they can't hand out insane loans for education if education costs little. Schools notice that students have no problem paying large sums of money, so.. they increase tuition, books, add fees, and suddenly, schools are bumping up against what students' would be able to borrow, so those lenders are more than happy to accept more risk-free revenue in the future in exchange for a pittance now, and suddenly, we have a feedback loop that spirals ever-upwards.

The absolutely quickest way to solve the problem is unwind the various bankrupcy laws that makde student loans essentially bankruptcy-proof. Lenders should have to do things like credit-worthiness checks on students.

The best way is to simply provide a free college education for every student that wants one, just like we do a high school education. The entire idea that you should have to assume a crapton of debt just to learn something is insane. The "student loan industry" shouldn't exist.
- The US can look at how other countries, that don’t outright provide free education, do it instead of reinventing the wheel.
  
  Getting rid of the discharge protection is only a small part of it.
  
  It’s more important to set a legal maximum for college tuition for accredited institutions.
  
  Then make any subsidies and funds contingent being accredited.
  
  Lastly make federal loans contingent on enrollment to accredited institutions, with the additional benefit of being able to cap the loan amount at a level correlated to the legal maximum tuition (not to be confused with setting at the tuition level because living expenses need to be taken into account as well).
  
  Make the interest rate sub 1%, because the government shouldn’t profit off of you as it is a service and do away with private middle men that administer the loans, instead establishing a special loan administration agency.
  
  This will have as effect that institutions either get in line or lose all government funds and a significant portion of enrollments.
  
  If you then also manage to uphold a uniform quality level that you regularly inspect at the accredited institutions, you’ll end up with a clear, affordable choice of quality education v. unknown quality education that may or may not be a huge waste of non-publicly provided money.
  
  ETA:
  
  You can even take it a step further and follow more examples from abroad in terms of acceptance.
  Where you aim to get to a situation that everyone that applies with the pre-requisite prior education credentials, gets accepted.
  
  The way this is often done abroad is with a centralized application process managed by the government, in which you indicate your top 3 preferred colleges, the portal verifies your prior education (as it's centrally registered) and then enrolls you in order of preference.
  For some studies, like law school, med school and psychology they'll have more applicants than available spots, and in those cases it's decided by lottery with slightly weighted chances based on your grade average.
  The end result is that the vast majority of people automatically get accepted and the ones that don't get in via the lottery are almost guaranteed to be placed the following year.
  
  This solves the whole minority/legacy/etc. acceptance debacle, makes applying for schools less like applying for a job with writing essays and stuffing your resume with a bunch of extracurriculars and in the process makes the accredited institutions even more attractive compared to the potential hold outs that keep doing things the old fashioned way.
- Yeah, you have this right. If we do undo the bankruptcy laws, though, we do still need to do something to support students who don't qualify for credit. Otherwise we will be making a university education even more difficult for less privileged people to attain.
  
  We would probably need to expand grant programs to compensate for the extra barrier.
- You've hit the nail on the head. The government has set up a perfect storm of crippling student loans. I'm with you up until the free education part, but I see where you're coming from.
  
  The reason we got into this mess is because previously, you needed some form of wealth to attend college. The government didn't like the class divide, and backed federal loans so that anyone could get a loan. Then to address the concern of a student, with no assets, just immediately declaring bankruptcy after his degree, they made it impossible.
  
  Free education would address this, but I'm not so sure that would do more than just adjust the problem. We have free education up through high school, and generally poor neighborhoods have shit education and can't afford private or to move. I don't see how that problem doesn't just expand to colleges.
  
  We already have an issue getting good quality teachers and paying them, that problem will only explode when we take on professor salaries.
  
  I'm a conservative libertarian, so I'd rather see the government get their hands out of it all, or let the local governments deal with it. I know that's not ideal, but I'd rather see the problems reset and then look for solutions. We have such a large stack of band aids right now, its tough to say what will happen when we start removing them, or adding different ones.
- Why not go a step further and make huge education mandatory? We used to consider high school optional, but eventually we realized the immense value that comes with an educated society.
- I agree in principle, but not in reality. We will never get student loan relief if we shoot for "perfect".
  
  Yes, schools will raise prices in response, if they don't have to share any responsibility for the loans. Every time we get some way to enable students to pay for college, schools raise the price more. It's a fact, and I agree that they will be dicks again if they can.
  
  But, that does not exclude half measures to give relief now. We can have an imperfect non-solution now, and go for the long term solution later if it helps people get by.
  
  Lenders should have to do things like credit-worthiness checks on students.
  
  Impossible. 18 year olds don't have extensive credit histories, if they have any. It's simply an impossible thing to evaluate.
Especially when you have Ivy League schools that could spend a million dollars a year on dorms and still make profits from the donations they receive.

So many Universities have become a booming business, making me want to throw up. Knowledge is crucial. Putting it behind a giant paywall that keeps growing for its own selfish needs is a means of control.

Note that I'm not talking about every single college in the world. I'm just referring to a big problem with a lot of them.

Sincerely, A college student
I love how "politics is the art of the possible" and "don't make the perfect the enemy of the good" evaporate instantly when the possible and the good are things that centrists don't want to do.

Cool. Where was this when they had leverage in Congress?

Why not just propose universal healthcare and universal basic income while they're at it? I mean why aim so low when we're not actually serious?

Cool. Where was this when they had leverage in Congress?

If they proposed it then they might have actually had to pass it or look bad.
Yup. It's all a show to keep themselves in power while doing nothing. Performative time wasting as a generation drowns.
When did they have leverage?

After 2020 they had enough to pass it in the house, but couldn't overcome the 60 vote fillabuster and they couldnt change that because of Manchin and Sinema. 2022 they have enough in the senate but the house will never write such a bill.
- Reconciliation only needs a simple majority. All democrats plus Kamala to break the tie.
  
  Go on a public tirade against Sinema and Manchin. Ads, Rallies, Press tours. Send Biden town to town all over Arizona and West Virginia. Explain what Build Back Better does and what Manchin and Sinema were killing. If you had to make back room deals with them. I can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
  
  They will not do anything of the sort. Biden was picked by the billionaires and corporations specifically because he said nothing would fundamentally change. He was picked because he said he would veto Medicare for all.
  
  TLDR: Republican Politicians (Fascists)are evil. Democratic Politicians (Conservatives) are objectively better but it’s a low bar to be better than Republicans.
- In some of their omnibus spending packages they had leverage.
  
  I'm not saying they had carte Blanche. But they certainly had leverage.

Supreme court says no.

The Supreme Court is partisan. Believing that the current SC is anything but an extension of the Republican Party would be believing a lie.

Elections have consequences. Vote.
- Yeah, the same organization that, in 2000, voted on party lines to quit counting citizen's ballots because their party had votes at the moment. They are a sham organization right now and have been for a long time.

Please let this pass and kick in after I get my grad school loans.. haha.

This would put us in line with other countries who give loans to college students with no interest. I think it's a great idea, much better than the one time loan forgiveness nonsense that was tried before.

I think they just need to let people default and get out via bankruptcy. Doubt it will ever happen though.

They'd have to change the law Biden personally made that prevents student loans from being removed in bankruptcy proceedings.

That would also fuck millions of American's credit and lead to all kinds of problems in the economy. Letting everyone go bankrupt is not an acceptable government solution, they need to do something better.
- Maybe you're right. I admit I'm a bit naive on some of the economic implications.
  
  I feel like allowing bankruptcy would punish the dumb borrowers somewhat, but NOT punish them with crippling debt for life, as is currently the case. It would also punish loaners (including the government) for lending money to people for fairly useless degrees who would never be able to pay them back.
Nah, thats not just. They don't need to introduce a bill to wipe this out. Biden should do it because he can and its the right thing to do.
- The supreme court said he can't.

I feel like Universities are like spinning disks in a computer their time is not long for this world.

I don’t goto libraries for basic research. Sure libraries still server a purpose but I think covid taunt us we don’t need to shove a bunch of kids in a room to learn especially at the college level. Sure dedicated schools should still exist for doctors and engineers. But if you just want to learn about things we have the internet. Certifications / Bar exams could replace degrees for many professions.

As a software engineer my degree didn’t mean much after my first job. Hell when I moved to California I was 1 of two people on the entire team that had a degree. The other guy had an english degree. Most everyone was sell taught.

Just seems university schooling is wildly expensive for what we as a society get out of it. You have tons of people with degrees working minimum wage jobs unrelated to their field of study. They were sold a lie that if they got a degree regardless of what it was in they would make tons of money.

So why would anyone ever pay it back?

Well, you could do interest free with penalties for not making minimum payments.

But also, effectively canceling student loans may be the whole point
Want to buy a house? Or make most major life financial decisions involving loans? You’ll pay it off to the best of your ability. Even if your student loan payment is a couple hundred bucks a month, lenders look at the entire principal and weight it heavily against you—even with 7 years of perfect payments.

But the real question you should ask is: why do we want normal people to pay these particular loans back when it is a fact that the government crafts policies to force people into higher education in order to secure our economy? For all the bluster with Gen Z somewhat dodging degrees, the fact remains that higher education remains a requirement for the future strength of all of us.

It should be gratis just like primary education is. It’s a public good. Cut the cost of getting these degrees and suddenly you don’t have people requiring incredibly high salaries in order to just pay the interest.
To improve their credit score.