Trump proposes more student loan forgiveness, activists yawn

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Try to imagine the reaction if President Trump proposed a giant new student loan forgiveness program for low and moderate income borrowers. There would probably be glowing editorials in The New York Times, endorsements from groups advocating student loan relief for struggling borrowers, and maybe even bipartisan legislation in Congress.

In fact, President Trump proposed exactly such a program in his budget request earlier this year, but those who you would expect to support such a plan actually oppose it. They say it would cut student aid. The Center for American Progress described the proposed changes to the student loan program as part of a “cynical attack on college students.” USA Today warned, “Donald Trump’s budget cuts back key student loan programs.”

In a new paper published by the Brookings Institution’s “Evidence Speaks” series, Alexander Holt and I show just how generous the Trump student loan plan would be for undergraduates. Trump’s proposal builds on an existing program that President Obama expanded in 2010, called Income-Based Repayment, increasing the amount of debt an undergraduate borrower stands to have forgiven by thousands of dollars. That is because the Trump proposal would offer undergraduates loan forgiveness after 15 years of income-based payments, rather than the current 20 year term. So large is the increase in benefits for borrowers with the highest debt loads that we think the proposal actually goes too far. And we question whether loan forgiveness is the best way to help families pay for college.

Trump’s proposal can’t be both a cut in student aid, as the press and the activists claim, and an overly-generous increase, as we show, can it? It can, actually.

That might explain why would-be supporters of more student aid and loan forgiveness from the federal government have come out against Trump’s proposal. To pay for this big increase in benefits, the Trump proposal would all but eliminate loan forgiveness programs for graduate students and interest subsidies for some undergraduates. You might call this a populist proposal, taking government benefits from the elite professional class and redirecting them to lower-income and middle-class borrowers who may have only attended community colleges.

That’s what makes the lack of support from left-of-center activists so curious. Could it be that they believe protecting government subsidies for graduate students and the universities who enroll them is more important than helping families pay for two-year and four-year degrees? Maybe.
http://www.aei.org/publication/trump-proposes-more-student-loan-forgiveness-activists-yawn/

Betsy Devos - why are you saddling Americans with this?

[RoosGirl]

Wow, he's such a fiscal conservative.   

When a "republican" president !expands! a marxist troll's loan forgiveness program.   

Let's just make all college free like Bernie thinks we should.   

[Cyber Liberty]

Wow, he's such a fiscal conservative.   

When a "republican" president !expands! a marxist troll's loan forgiveness program.   

Let's just make all college free like Bernie thinks we should.   

Might be time to tighten the thumbscrews another notch.

[RoosGirl]

Bullshit like this is why the Federal Income Tax scam will never be overhauled.  I think I will start petitioning for a federal home loan forgiveness program.   We've paid on it for 8 years and have 12 left; I say when once it's half paid off it might as well count as it being all paid off.  And all the suckers who are "rich" can subsidize it.

[RoosGirl]

Might be time to tighten the thumbscrews another notch.

Clearly one notch at a time is not working.

[Cyber Liberty]

Clearly one notch at a time is not working.

Do it any faster and the rubes will wake up.

[Chosen Daughter]

Americans want jobs to go with the educations.  They could pay off their education debt if we weren't giving so much corporate welfare by H1B. 

What we should do is cut HIB so that Americans who have invested in their future can get decent paying jobs.  Then they can pay their debt.  Government has been screwing Americans that way too.  They have driven wages down by employing foreigners who will take lower wages.  They go directly from F1 to HIB.

[DB]

This crap really pisses me off. I'm paying for my kids to go to college and its costing me a fortune.

Colleges that took the money should be on the hook for the bad loans.

It was access to easy money that ran the costs of education sky high in the first place. Just like easy money did to real estate ten-ish years ago. It made an education very expensive for everyone while the schools got wealthy.

Forgiving these loans is just passing the costs to those who acted responsibly rewarding those who didn't. Corrupt to the core.

[Cyber Liberty]

Americans want jobs to go with the educations.  They could pay off their education debt if we weren't giving so much corporate welfare by H1B. 

What we should do is cut HIB so that Americans who have invested in their future can get decent paying jobs.  Then they can pay their debt.  Government has been screwing Americans that way too.  They have driven wages down by employing foreigners who will take lower wages.  They go directly from F1 to HIB.

I work in a large company, lots of H1B people around, and I'm here to tell you they're seriously cracking down on it.  It's now costing my employer over six figures.  Per person.  And CBP is starting to put them all under a microscope.

H1B shit just got real.

[Chosen Daughter]

I work in a large company, lots of H1B people around, and I'm here to tell you they're seriously cracking down on it.  It's now costing my employer over six figures.  Per person.  And CBP is starting to put them all under a microscope.

H1B shit just got real.

Good.  The program has been seriously abused.  It was supposed to be only for jobs in which they couldn't find Americans qualified.  They are using it now like company welfare.  And if we don't like personal welfare we shouldn't like corporate welfare either.

And they should be under the microscope by CBP.  Do we even know who is here working on HIB? 

[Applewood]

Americans want jobs to go with the educations.  They could pay off their education debt if we weren't giving so much corporate welfare by H1B. 

What we should do is cut HIB so that Americans who have invested in their future can get decent paying jobs.  Then they can pay their debt.  Government has been screwing Americans that way too.  They have driven wages down by employing foreigners who will take lower wages.  They go directly from F1 to HIB.

Agreed, but I'm willing to bet there is a significant number of these deadbeats who have the means to repay their loans, but choose to spend the money on other things.  They need to be made to pay off their loans, or else. 

[Cyber Liberty]

Agreed, but I'm willing to bet there is a significant number of these deadbeats who have the means to repay their loans, but choose to spend the money on other things.  They need to be made to pay off their loans, or else.

There are some tough restrictions on student loans.  By law, they cannot be discharged by a bankruptcy, for example.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

This crap really pisses me off. I'm paying for my kids to go to college and its costing me a fortune.

Colleges that took the money should be on the hook for the bad loans.

It was access to easy money that ran the costs of education sky high in the first place. Just like easy money did to real estate ten-ish years ago. It made an education very expensive for everyone while the schools got wealthy.

Forgiving these loans is just passing the costs to those who acted responsibly rewarding those who didn't. Corrupt to the core.

Just remember it was W in 2007 that initiated this abomination.

[TomSea]

Trump policy halts loan relief for thousands of students

...

Trump has thrust Cabrera Garcia and more than 65,000 other student borrowers across the country, including about 1,500 in New England, into a new state of financial limbo by suspending applications under Obama’s program of loan forgiveness.

Trump’s Department of Education has not said when it will restart the program. But it has signaled, as it rewrites the rules, that it will make it tougher to get relief in the future.

“While students should have protections from predatory practices, schools and taxpayers should also be treated fairly as well,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, an advocate for for-profit education, said in a speech last month.

“Under the previous rules,’’ she said, “all one had to do was raise his or her hands to be entitled to so-called free money.”

More: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2017/10/01/trump-policy-hurts-student-borrowers/fq9bkhlWh176FTjxwZlNPJ/story.html

Unsure about the original story.

[Acklaimation]

This crap really pisses me off. I'm paying for my kids to go to college and its costing me a fortune.

Colleges that took the money should be on the hook for the bad loans.

It was access to easy money that ran the costs of education sky high in the first place. Just like easy money did to real estate ten-ish years ago. It made an education very expensive for everyone while the schools got wealthy.

Forgiving these loans is just passing the costs to those who acted responsibly rewarding those who didn't. Corrupt to the core.

Couldn't have said it better myself. Why am I feeling like I'm getting punished for something that should have been done right in the first place?

Really bullshit

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Why am I feeling like I'm getting punished for something that should have been done right in the first place?

Really bullshit

Spoken like a true conservative.

Welcome to this forum, @Acklaimation

[ABX]

For most of our recent history, how to pay for college was one of the first big economic lessons a young adult faced. They learned how to balance debt and priorities, work and go to school, apply for scholarships, and more. This was a great lesson in managing large scale finances.

Now, students are going into college racking up as much debt as possible with the mindset they don't have to pay for it and their contract on the debt means nothing. They are learning the exact opposite lesson- they don't have to think about the future, their name on a contract line doesn't mean anything if they can just be loud enough, that debt is something to be negotiated after the fact, not avoided.

Not only are these Bernie Sanders type proposals ripping this opportunity from students, it is also giving them a very unhealthy start to adulthood in regards to understanding how finances and contracts work.

[Cyber Liberty]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Why am I feeling like I'm getting punished for something that should have been done right in the first place?

Really bullshit

Hey, Welcome Acklaimation!   Interesting handle!  Come to The Lounge and tell us about it!  Coffee, donuts and chit-chat, if you can stand us...

http://www.gopbriefingroom.com/index.php/topic,241991.15675/topicseen.html

[driftdiver]

This crap really pisses me off. I'm paying for my kids to go to college and its costing me a fortune.

Colleges that took the money should be on the hook for the bad loans.

It was access to easy money that ran the costs of education sky high in the first place. Just like easy money did to real estate ten-ish years ago. It made an education very expensive for everyone while the schools got wealthy.

Forgiving these loans is just passing the costs to those who acted responsibly rewarding those who didn't. Corrupt to the core.

@DB
I think the people in the banks and universities should be jailed.  Along with Congress they've set up a ponzi scheme and turned many of our kids into indentured servants.

The loans cannot be discharged with bankruptcy so they are risk free.    So the banks don't care.  The kids largely don't know any better because nobody teaches the majority.    The easy money allows Universities to steadily increase their costs.

Its about the money.  Banks pay for the access to our kids and Universities make out like bandits.

[corbe]

                     Welcome to TBR @Acklaimation