Biden Makes a Move on Student Loan Debt

President Joe Biden announced a plan to provide tens of millions of Americans with student ...

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President Joe Biden announced a plan to provide tens of millions of Americans with student loan debt relief. The fallout was swift. Our hosts are here with their reactions. Plus:  Jonah, David, and Declan discuss the results of this week’s primary elections.

Show Notes:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Nikkimemmott

    I'm pretty ambivalent about the student debt relief. I paid off my loans (eventually), and I do think people have a responsibility to understand what they are borrowing, but also college is so expensive now - the cost of my university has doubled since 1997, and that's just tuition. The piece of it that I would like to hear people more knowledgeable than me is how -or if - we measure the cost of the population of borrowers that have substantial student debt delaying having kids or buying homes because of that debt;. On the Dispatch Live the guest talked about how in 20 years people will be very well off - which is 100% true, but what are those people doing in the intervening 20 years? At least some of them are renting, and waiting to have kids into their 40's and increasing our medical costs because of it. The scale is probably the issue - these are pretty small numbers of people we're talking about. I don't think the student debt relief is a panacea - I completely agree with all of the arguments that we need to actually solve for the high cost of college, revamp the income based repayment programs, all of that. But I do wonder if there are some less directly quantifiable benefits that we'll see come out of it if we look.

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  2. david rae

    A few comments on the podcast and other conservative takes on the student debt forgiveness issue. While I'm against the whole concept, are conservatives misrepresenting some of the facts here?
    While it may benefit many rich students/parents, if we have a 50% graduation rate, then there are a lot of students out there who aren't college grads. What if the President had just targeted that segment of the population? (Well, less voters, but conservatives might have made an even better argument regarding who is more deserving of the forgiveness.)
    Second, comments keep saying we're asking other taxpayers to pay these debts. Isn't this amount just added on to the national debt unless we see a tax increase?

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  3. Dana Smith

    Enjoyed this conversation and also I think a glaring missing piece from the conversation is that about 40% of people who started college and took out loans didn’t get the degree. So while some people, as pointed out, will inevitably be high earners as a result of their college education, 40% will not and still carry the burden of loans. I agree this particular policy has some issues and that it may have been done in a way similar to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it would stick, but I also think the core issue around the *who* needs it was minimized.

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  4. Laura

    When you're talking about student loans today, 10k does not sound like much to me.

    There's a part in this Vox article about the loan forgiveness on why the 10k figure is actually useful when the amount of student loan debt these days can be so astronomical compared to when David French was in school. ;-) (Sorry, couldn't resist.) https://www.vox.com/2022/8/24/23319967/student-loan-payments-debt-forgiveness-biden

    "A study from the New York Fed found that students are most likely to default on the smallest loan balances and least likely to default on the largest. "

    ...

    "Many people with small loan balances, by contrast, are college dropouts. They didn’t borrow much, but they have no credentials to help them earn better wages. "

    I didn't hear this angle talked about in this episode. If someone at The Dispatch has a response they want to make, I'm hoping I see it.

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  5. James Angelichio

    I can’t believe they actually proposed that people who take useful degrees like Chemical Engineering be penalized in favor of people who study poetry. What a backward policy. Let’s incentivize STEM degrees, which this country desperately needs and stop warehousing people who come out of college with zero useful skills. I’m with Jonah’s father-in-law; “Can you eat it?”

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  6. Pohl

    Sadly, it seems clear Jonah and David both support rape and incest exceptions to abortion because I would never hammer those points without making clear my own position. They did not bother. They may be just talking about the politics here, but, as I feared, David’s vaunted pro-life credentials don’t translate well into his new career as an opinionator. This was evident in his recent article citing some atheist pro-lifers. He came out of the woodwork after years of no great pro-life writing that I’m aware of, and this was his post-Dobbs foray? I just expected better.

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  7. Hlin Terrorista

    Just to note - this will only cover FEDERAL loans, not private loans. As someone who put themselves through a bachelor's degree, paid it off, got a masters degree paid for through research assistantship THEN had to do a career change due to market forces this will nothing to help my pay of my accelerated bachelor's degree in nursing, which at a public school is charged at graduate rates. Yes, I have a good job -I'm a nurse - however the debt to get there was pretty crippling given that I had to take it on later in life. What little Federal aid I received is almost paid off, the bulk of my debt is private and I"m sure this is true for many people. PLEASE stop saying this helps everyone who got student loans, it will help with Federal debt only and given how that money hasn't kept up with cost of education most grads will still have crippling debt because they had to take out private loans.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Duke Powell

    One striking development in the loan forgiveness debate is the number of Democrat office holders coming out against it. I was a bit surprised that the three of you neglected to discuss how those same Democrats should be offering legislation to stop this unconstitutional usurpation of their prerogatives.

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    1. BadgerBill

      Indeed. As Jonah says, the plural of anecdote is not data, yet I hear from heavily left leaning family and friends that they oppose this program, too. As usual, many can’t immediately articulate why they oppose the program, and as time goes by, they quickly realize its fundamental unfairness (in general higher earners getting a big benefit which is paid in general by lower earners).
      The argument that it’s politics as usual and other programs benefit the few is a variation on whataboutism. The fact it may be true doesn’t make the current program okay.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Aylene Wright

        So far the main arguments "for" the loan forgiveness program seems to be just attacking the critics as hypocrites, or accusing them of trying to stoke outrage to divide the country, etc. 🙄

        Some are framing the program as a reasonable compromise between forgiving ALL student loan debt and forgiving none of it. I don't quite agree and I don't think anyone at TD is arguing for no debt forgiveness at all. But at least that's somewhat of an attempt at an actual defense of the actual program.

        But "if group A got a handout 2 years ago then group B gets to have a handout this year" sounds an awful lot like "if candidate A got off for criming 6 years ago then candidate B gets off for criming this year". Equitable on the surface, and yet.

        Or the Biblical tale of splitting the baby. If both alleged mothers had agreed to Solomon's proposed solution, the outcome would have actually been quite equitable. Each mother gets half a dead baby. But very few people would argue that outcome was just.

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        1. BadgerBill

          Aylene,
          1). I really had to laugh at the two “criming” candidates 6 years apart. Who could you possibly be talking about? 😃
          2). I agree with some debt forgiveness but based on certain criteria (government service, specific jobs provided in specific locations, etc.) I’m not qualified to determine. Certainly, having student debt at this particular moment in time isn’t enough.
          3). As has been discussed in other items, this is a fascinating example of how the constituency of the two parties has flipped. Democrats now give money to the generally better educated and compensated, and Republicans cry it’s unfair to their generally lesser educated and compensated base voters. What next, endorsement of Republican candidates by private unions? Democrats advocating lower tax rates? Nah, not quite yet…

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  9. AS Upstate

    Just a quick note on NY-19. I've lived in this district for about 12 years, and I really love the political diversity here. In the tiny town up the road you can drive by BLM signs and pride flags right next to Trump 2024 and my favorite, "Impeach Biden" signs.

    My gut tells me that most of the conventional wisdom on Ryan's victory might be a bit off. This district basically constitutes the mid- and upper Hudson Valley and the Catskills region. During the pandemic, we were absolutely flooded with well-to-do New Yorkers, fleeing COVID. It was insane. It's still extremely difficult to find a home here - whole 5 years ago, places would sit on the market for years (though it is finally getting a little better).

    A lot of the city slickers couldn't handle this rough and tumble rural living and headed back to NYC. But quite a few people stayed. They are almost all Democrats, almost all upper middle class and very likely to vote in mid-terms, and many have changed their registrations, which they did not do during the 2020 election.

    Bottom line - I think that the D+2 lean in the special election should not necessarily be viewed as a signal that the broader national environment is the same as 2020. 130,000 votes were cast - I find it very easy to believe that a net 4000 - 5000 Democrats moved here and registered since 2020. I think this is a better hypothesis for why Ryan won than any vague "environment" moving towards the Democrats. It's hard to compare with 2018 or 2020 because turnout was so much higher in those elections

    That said, I hope I'm wrong!

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    1. Avatar photo
      Michael Darwin

      Howdy, neighbor! I'm next door in NY-18 and I was thinking something similar. This is a close district, and it won't take much to swing the outcome. Other than college, I've lived in Orange County since 1975, back in the Ben Gilman days. These districts have been repeatedly redrawn, and the state has generally drifted blue-er. A number of towns in this area voted Trump in 2016 but Biden in 2020. I am not sure there is a lot to be gleaned from this crystal ball.

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      Aylene Wright

      I think I live a little to the south of your district and have seen my share of BLM flags, Pride flags, and Trump flags, though I haven't seen any Impeach Biden flags I have seen some "F Biden" signs. I agree some of the swing could indeed be due to displaced city slickers.

      And this is the pitfall of assuming that all politics is national as unfortunately even TD tends to do. There are often local factors that national media tends to overlook.

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    The_Mat_Man

    Sorry Jonah, but no one but those bound to you by blood or a marriage vow would call The Remnant the flagship podcast of The Dispatch.

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