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.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-made-it-harder-to-discharge-student-debt-through-bankruptcy-2022-5?op=1

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."