Fighting WWF style

I received an email from the Department of Education a few days ago in which Secretary Miguel Carmona promised that “we will not stop fighting to provide debt relief to borrowers,” the “we” presumably being the whole Biden team and perhaps the party they belong to. Later in the note, Mr Secretary reiterated the concept: “We will not stop fighting to make sure that student debt is not a barrier for Americans.”

How grand that they’re in there “fighting” on my behalf! What Carmona pointedly did not promise was actually winning any of these noble fights.

A skeptic might wonder if he and his boss Joe ever meant to win them in the first place. They certainly did things that undermined their chances of success while waving their arms vigorously about how hard they’re fighting.

To start with, it took President Biden nearly two years to formulate a student debt relief plan. Once he did so, the pearl-clutching predictably began by the financiers making a pile off student debt. Unfair to the prosperous who paid theirs off! Costly! Giving away free shit!

These Murdoch-world talking points flooded the airwaves and journals, obscuring the realities of the vast burden of student debt that is crippling the prospects of the nation’s youth. Furthermore, even the most generous proposed forgiveness ($20,000) wouldn’t put a dent in the debt peonage many borrowers now live under.

Republican governors and the company that manages my own loan, Mohela, sued to stop the debt forgiveness, and the Trump-heavy Supreme Court agreed with them in June, even fast-tracking the decision by using their so-called “shadow docket” to leapfrog the issue past lower courts.

Mohela is a private entity, allowed by the Federal Government to enjoy free money by handling loans that pay them substantially more than the miniscule interest banks were charging for most of the last decade. Not only that, Mohela isn’t on the hook for non-payment—a sweet deal, but obviously not sweet enough.

I have a personal stake in the matter. I obtained a master’s degree late in life and took on debt to finance it. I’m not complaining because it boosted my earnings substantially, and I haven’t had any problems paying the amount established when I consolidated them and started out on a 20-year repayment plan.

But my loans have been a saga of betrayal. The deal I was promised in 2006 was that, in exchange for keeping up steady payments while working in the public-interest sector, I would be eligible for full forgiveness of the balance. That is, if I stuck to the nonprofit world or worked in underserved communities for a decade, Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) would kick in. It was meant to encourage new nurses or MDs to take up positions in faraway posts or to eschew more lucrative gigs in the private sector. The deal was straight up: 10 years of sacrifice in exchange for full debt relief.

I duly did so. However, after eight years of regular payments, I was informed that the rules had changed and that I had to switch to an income-based payment plan. And oh by the way, sorry, but all your payments up to now don’t count! We made a mistake, and you will pay for it. Start over from zero.

That’s the way loan forgiveness has worked so far. Even among those who did manage to jump through all the correct hoops, a tiny percentage have successfully obtained loan forgiveness after turning in all the paperwork. That’s how all these wonderful programs that Fox News gets all knickers-twisted over actually work.

I decided not to give in to the new regime and continued to make my original payments, thinking that perhaps some well-intentioned government would someday, somehow, fix the sorry mess. When Biden’s plan arose, and the lawsuits followed, I promptly contacted my congressional representative, Adriano Espaillat, to encourage the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress to take legislative action. After all, the lawsuit argued that Biden did not have executive authority to issue the forgiveness, so the obvious solution was to do it through statute.

Here’s what I wrote to Espaillat:

President Biden’s executive order to forgive a small portion of outstanding student loans has been overturned by a federal judge on the grounds that the executive is usurping a legislative function. There is a simple remedy: take legislative action to authorize the loan forgiveness.

I urge you to support H.R. 9110, which would amend the relevant statute. This must be done in the remaining days of the current session as your party is likely to lose control of the chamber starting next year.

Well, golly gee howdy! I was entirely correct in my assessment, for which I enjoy no glee. An Espaillat staffer later assured me verbally that all was well, that they had everything under control, and that the debt forgiveness package was safe. It wasn’t. Did he know that, or is Espaillat just a lousy defender of his constituents?

If I continue to pay off the loan I took out at the rate established by Mohela at the outset, I will retire the debt somewhere around 2031, or 25 years after I graduated. I will be 80 years old. Meanwhile, Biden, Carmona, and their pals will still be “fighting” for my interests and well-being. And Lucy will still be holding the football for Charlie Brown to kick.

Incidentally, while Joe’s pretty confused these days, I’m convinced that on this one he knew exactly what he was doing.