“it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end to capitalism”
Just a reminder that the modern version of student debt cruelty began with a bill written and driven into law by
back before he was in the White House.Do you have some more information about this? With links? I’d like something to throw at the few yanks I know the next time they start shilling for this cadaver
CW: source is Business Insider.
In 1976, Congress amended the Higher Education Act to make federal student loans nondischargeable through bankruptcy unless the borrower meets the undue hardship standard. The standard requires them to prove that they cannot maintain a minimal standard of living, their circumstances will likely not improve, and they have made a good-faith effort in repaying their debt.
Nearly three decades later, Joe Biden — then a senator serving Delaware — had a large role in making it that standard stricter. In 2005, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, and its implications for student-loan borrowers were dire. As signed into law under former President George W. Bush, the bill expanded the undue hardship requirement to borrowers with private student loans, expanding the scope of borrowers who would have to prove their impossible predicament in court.
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden defended his vote for the bill, saying in a Democratic primary debate that he “improved it.”
“I had a choice, it was going to pass — Republican president, Republican Congress, and I offered two amendments to make sure that people under $50,000 would not be affected and women and children would go to the front of the line on alimony and support payments,” Biden said in March 2020. “I did not like the rest of the bill, but I improved it, number one.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of Biden’s 2020 rivals who pushed for expansive student debt cancellation, blasted the 2005 bankruptcy law, along with Biden’s support of it.
“That bankruptcy bill made it impossible or very difficult for people to escape from that student debt,” Sanders said during the primary debate. “It was a very, very bad bill.”
Thanks!
Here’s two excerpts from the follow article that make for interesting dinner conversations:
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-student-loans/
“In 1978, Biden supported the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, which eliminated income restrictions on federal loans to expand eligibility to all students. Biden helped write a separate bill that year blocking students from seeking bankruptcy protections on those loans after graduation. (The income restrictions on federal loans were reinstated in 1981.) Then he went on to vote to create the Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students, or PLUS, program in 1980 and the Auxiliary Loans to Assist Students, or ALAS, program in 1981, which extended loan eligibility to students with no parental financial support.”
" One of the most significant changes in the Higher Education reauthorization was a provision that prevented students in default under the Guaranteed Student Loan program from receiving new federal assistance. It also imposed new regulations that “helped fuel the development of lending-industry giants like Sallie Mae by creating barriers to entry to smaller, newer companies wanting to enter the field,” the think tank Education Sector wrote in a 2007 report.
“Loosened loan eligibility requirements, together with two new federal loan programs, increased student borrowing from $1.8 billion in 1977 to $12 billion in 1989,” the report said, referring to the Middle Income Student Assistance Act, and the PLUS and ALAS programs."
Thanks! Although the wording of those laws seems deliberately weasely to pretend it was an attempt to broaden education availability
Unfortunately the only other option doesn’t want to get rid of em either.
Good thing I didn’t go to college. Of course I will be priced out of living in about two years.
Oh boy do I have news for you! Stick around this instance of Lemmy and you might discover options beyond “blue team” or “red team.”
There’s the red team, and then there’s the RED team.
I do have to wonder about the terminology. “Forgiveness”. As if you have wronged the society in some fashion and are now being “forgiven”. But what exactly did you do, besides trying to survive?
Student debt discharging? Student debt liberation? Student debt emancipation?
“Removal” would work just fine
Loan’t
Debt’n’t’ve
David Graeber wrote an incredible book called Debt: The First 5000 Years which is sometimes referred to around Hexbear as “the debt book” or “graeber’s debt book”. it’s an incredible read and one of the central themes is the language of debt and its connection to moral religious language (and historical association with religious institutions).
in short, the language we use to talk about debt contributes to our general moral confusion around who are the victims and who are the bad actors.
Thank you!
always has beenIs this a reason to vote for Biden?
Hexbears are too powerful
Nah, the asteroid just has to mainly take out the Washington DC area really. Not even an entire state. With ensuing chaos the last thing you will ever have to worry about, in your lifetime, is student depts.
Now saying that, a lot of innocent people love there and it would be an absolute tragedy if an asteroid were to hit that area. I’m just stating, destruction of the earth, even a major portion of the US landmass, wouldn’t even be necessary… lol
Welp, no time like the present.
