NBC News has yet another story out today about young voters who supported Biden in 2020 but aren't sure they will again. They all have their reasons, some more sensible than others, and sure. Whatever. It probably doesn't matter much because most of them will come back home once the campaign starts.
But there's one complaint that continues to boggle me. I get that lots of people don't follow all the ins and outs of who did what to whom, and lots of people also don't seem to understand that a president isn't a king. But in the particular case of student loans, it's something that got a lot of attention and there were no subtleties involved: Biden kept his campaign promise and the Supreme Court killed it. End of story.
But even kids who know this don't care. They really wanted it to happen and it didn't, so they're mad at Joe. End of story.
I just don't get this.
Especially since he has gone on to provide billions of dollars in relief, it's just more targeted at the people who really got screwed over by the system.
Serious question...How did anyone get screwed over by the system? If the terms of their loan changed without their consent or something like that I would understand. But I don't consider willingly entering into a contract (i.e. a loan) and then being held accountable to its terms as being "screwed over".
Saddling a bunch of kids with debt that can't shed, but no assets is "screwing them over".
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There were a huge number of borrowers who were legally *owed* forgiveness for, e.g. taking public sector jobs like teaching or social work after college, and either their loan servicers or the DOE under De Vos refused to write them down. Or interest kept accruing even though it shouldn't have during certain periods of abeyance, etc., and ended up being more than the principle in some cases.
These aren't a bunch of deadbeats; they were people who got royally screwed by corrupt and/or incompetent loan servicing bureaucracies and Biden was trying to set it straight.
Were you around for the mortgage loan meltdown? I was an investigator for the California Department of Real Estate at the time and I saw first hand how many thousands of people were screwed over by those loans.
A lot of the repayment programs were very badly administered. In particular the PSLF program was administered in such a way that it was nearly impossible to get your loan forgiven.
This is something of a myth. It was not, and never was, "nearly impossible" to get your loans forgiven under PSLF.
Yes, some handlers put people on the wrong plans (perhaps intentionally). In other cases, people signed up for the wrong income-based plan (only a particular plan qualified, which if you did your due diligence you would have known to sign up for - the Biden administration issued a waiver to allow all income-based plans to qualify).
And then there's the matter of the data that was being reported. Borrowers are encouraged to submit employer certification forms annually, which is the same form as is used to actually apply for forgiveness after 120 payments. So every time you submit one, you're also told that your application for forgiveness is denied even though you're just submitting for certification of your employment on a rolling basis. I'm of the opinion that the "97% of borrowers were denied" reporting in 2017 had a LOT to do with this simple fact (along with the other 2 I just mentioned).
I think all of those things fall under the maladministration I mentioned.
Sure, but it wasn't "nearly impossible."
Mosey on over to http://www.reddit.com/r/PSLF for many, many anecdotes among the posts and comments.
To name a few: improper handling by loan providers through systematic policies/practices (putting people on incorrect plans that did not qualify for PSLF despite their stated wishes, as an example), mistakes in payment counts, forced administrative forbearance in certain circumstances that caused unnecessary gaps in qualifying payment counts through no fault of the borrower, and so on. Then there are the predatory loans disbursed through scammy for-profit schools for fraudulent purposes (on the part of the school). Among others.
Then there's disqualifying doctors who worked at a nonprofit hospital as a contractor, simply because the firm the hospital contracted was not a nonprofit. They are de facto public servants. As I type this, I also wonder about the local government employees-in-all-but-name contractors should have been eligible as well (and maybe they are): cases where a local government agency, instead of hiring an actual employee, will hire a contractor which will exclude that person from the better-than-they're-actually-getting benefits (insurance, retirement) but still pay them the same rate (or lower!) than an official government employee would receive. I've seen many posts on r/PSLF from people who are extremely grateful that the Biden administration issued policies that stopped fucking them over.
That's before you even get to the "legitimate" things, like people who have been faithfully paying on their loans for 20-25 years but haven't made enough money to be able to pay them off. There are/were also cases of people in these situations whose loans should have been discharged by the Dept. of Ed. because it was part of the loan terms, but Trump's Dept. of Ed. never did so (surprise!).
I'm sure there are more cases.
If you aren't legally allowed to drink, you shouldn't be legally allowed to sign up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
But The Youth have always been flighty and selfish. (Seniors are voters and also selfish - "Eff our grandkids!") You just can't count on young people re: democracy. (in general)
When my interest has doubled my principle that is fuckery.
Serious question...How did anyone get screwed over by the system?
If everyone possessed the knowledge of finances equal to Warren Buffet, I'd say you're on solid ground, and sure, absolutely no one in such a universe would be able to claim they'd been screwed over.
But there are reams of evidence suggesting America's system of higher education finance writ large produces very bad outcomes for millions of people (nearly all of whom are mere teenagers when they entered said system).
I know heroic Randians like you despise paternalism, but sometimes a modicum of government oversight produces better real world outcomes. I mean, are Norwegian teenagers and parents all that much more virtuous about debt than Americans, or do their better outcomes flow from the fact that, in Norway, college is free? Common sense suggests the contours of the respective systems have a bigger impact than the intrinsic attributes of Americans or Norwegians.
Keeping his campaign promise would be if he did it, not if he tried and got stymied
It’s like Trump’s wall. He said he would, maybe you give him some points for trying but he still broke his promise to get it done
It’s not like SCOTUS is a new thing after all. Predictable if he just freeballed it like this with executive powers that it’d get blocked. Making big promises then halfassing it with executive orders that you know will get blocked deserves some blowback
Not that I think it was a very good idea in the first place. I’m glad it got blocked
He didn’t “freeball” it, it was a regular use of presidential powers much less an over-reach than Trump repurposing funds for his wall. It was overturned by a clearly politicized SC. Your careless disregard for those affected by it makes clear you don’t understand the issues involved or think it’s a policy concern that should be addressed. But thanks for your comment.
+1
Like Trump's wall? But Republicans do give Trump credit for "trying" to build the wall - I put "trying" in scare quotes because he didn't really try very hard. The wall is only partially built, it's ludicrously ineffective even where it is built, but Trump = Wall is all they need. It's only Democrats who get blamed for what they sincerely tried to do but were forced out of by the courts.
If Trump wanted to build the wall, he would have had to get it through Congress during his first two years in office (before Democrats gained control of the House in the 2018 midterms). Trump refused to endorse a bill that would have built the wall and made some changes to immigration law that Trump wanted in exchange for writing DACA into law.
Trump supporters are a bit like a cult; his core supporters will support him pretty much regardless of what Trump does. I think it's a good thing that Democratic voters pay attention to what Democrats accomplish, but it's a bit frustrating as well. Biden has done an exceptionally good job of getting stuff through a closely divided Congress--certainly more than I expected--and he should get some credit for that.
+1
Your comment here is truly mind-boggling. It's one of the deep dysfunctions of our culture, driven by media, that the one person perceived to be "in charge" -- the president -- is blamed for everything that goes wrong, even when -- actually, especially when! -- they have no control over it.
Add to that the fact that the current SCOTUS is stacked with trump nominees, which is ENTIRELY because thousands of naive young clods voted for Jill Stein in several swing states in 2016. Because their friends made them feel that it wasn't cool to vote for that "neoliberal" Hillary Clinton.
I guess Biden should never have promised to forgive student debt, but instead have promised to do that "if the Trump Supreme Court doesn't block it." Yes, that would have satisfied those grumpy millennials!
The changes to the income-based repayment plan are a huge improvement. For people with large balances and modest incomes, those changes will likely save them more than the $10,000 write-off would have.
Stories like this always cherry-pick whom they quote, and there may be a desire to grab readers with some "look how clueless young people are" anecdotes (the Union organizer who is disappointed with Biden is a particularly ironic choice).
Yes but America self selects for selfishness. Lots of people who doesn’t get the relief - which includes people who make above whatever the cutoff is, people who paid off their loans already and people who never had loans to begin with - are or will be royally pissed about it. It’s the same as with rolling out Obamacare or anything else. “If I don’t personally benefit from it, then it shouldn’t exist at all for anybody” is sadly a belief held by tens of millions of selfish Americans.
I paid off all my loans -- which were not small -- about 10 years ago and I don't begrudge anyone at all who may have had their's forgiven. I was lucky to have well-compensated work and the payments were never much of a hardship for me. But you're absolutely right -- too many Americans have a IGMFY attitude about everything.
Completely agree, and I would add that this is why Social Security can’t be means based.
+1 to Austin and iamr.
Why we can't have nice things.
There are voters out there who think that because Roe was overturned while Biden was in office, the Democrats are the ones who are against abortion. There are voters out there who think the president is able to lower gas and food prices by pressing a button on his desk. There are voters out there who expect the president to make bipartisanship just happen on every issue, and hold the president’s party responsible for everything bad that happens, including bad stuff at the state or local level.
Which is to say, there are voters out there engaging in lots of magical thinking, and other voters out there who don’t think at all in any kind of rational way. I’m not surprised there are voters with student loans blaming Biden for them not being zeroed out. Voters can be incredibly short sighted and ignorant.
I do think subsidizing things like food if prices increase so fast in a short time is fine. Also not unheard of at all.
Certainly better than off and on starvation of the cutrent regime
Biden erred in making that pledge without caveating it may be thwarted by SCOTUS or other entities*. As a result, he raised false hopes, which is risky for politicians to do, especially on a policy that is bound to get a lot of exposure - which it did. Political malpractice. You piss off those hostile to debt forgiveness and those hoping for it. Lose/Lose.
* It's been obvious for a decade that right wing judges will try to limit executive power - at least when a Democrat is in power. This happened during the Obama administration, which I think included Biden.
I suspect they didn't actually think there would be Republican activists out there who would sue to block the progam just to spite people for trying to get a college education and harm Biden's credibility. Clearly a catastrophic failure of imagination.
Then they need to start paying attention. This kind of thing has been going in since the early 2000s, and ramped up when republicans were openly talking about making Obama fail. "the system" is just a lazy excuse for not engaging productively with real problems, which might require some grown-up things like comprimise and getting 80% of what you want.
While this is obviously brilliant, why didnt Dems think of this....what do they do when the GOP rejects the 80% offer? And the courts make up new law to deny the 60% plan?
They keep f*%&ing working on it (which, actually, they do) and keep publicly stating that it is the GOP and the couts blocking this (which they do). So, the Dems are for the mosty part doing their bit (when not being undermined by Bernie, Liz, Ed and the squad complaining that "it doesnt go far enough!!" and "stroke of a pen!" and all that. So, yeah, the kids need to pay attention
And if you have been paying attention, you would note that on a great many issues, Republicans won’t give the Democrats anything at all. Student-loan relief is one of those.
Yes, which is why I am not punishing Biden for this.
There are a lot of Democrats who decided it was a good idea to vote for Nader because Gore wasn’t pure enough for them. Bush gave us Alito and Roberts. Protest votes can have terrible consequences.
People who go to college vote Dem. That Democrats are not doing everything they possibly can to increase the number of college voters like a lazer is mind boggling.
What do you suggest they do?
Bernie Sanders and the squad and Ed Markey and increasingly Elizabeth Warren are raising them on a steady diet of "shouting what the president should do, whether or not it is doable is the same thing as civic engagement so if the president does not do with the stroke of a pen what you scream at him, they all suck and both parties are the same"
What does anyone expect?
What you're stating is happening is not happening.
I tend to blame it on that too--not Bernie himself so much, but on the Bernie followers who believed that all it takes to get what you want is electing the right person for president. I remember how they scorned Clinton for proposing achievable improvements as "incrementalism"--a 65% increase in the minimum wage was nothing, it had to double. I do think all that created an unrealistic expectation of how the political process works in a lot of people.
The Bernie-followers do this because the Bernie-leader (Bernie...) encourages this belief
Young Democratic voters have long had a habit of making the perfect the enemy of the good. Just ask Al Gore about all the young people who voted for Nader in protest.
Hope springs eternal until it is blacked out by the authoritarian regime that turns the nation into a police state and civil liberties are "temporarily" suspended indefinitely. Isn't that how it ends?
They're mad at Joe because it's an easy internet meme heavily promoted by billionaires and their bootlickers.
And "progressives"
“I want to show the Democratic Party as a young person that you still need to earn our vote and if you don’t, the consequences will be your career,” McKenzie said. “A Republican getting elected isn’t the end. It is the beginning of a much larger fight.”
Kay.
Armageddon may look cool in the movies, but war fought by increments, bite and hold tactics is usually less costly and more effective. But you go ahead see-- what Jill Stein will get you, aside from the 5 minute glow of righteousness after the ballot is registered.
Joe Biden will enjoy a placid retirement, while you get to look forward to an ocean of Grandes--or not, once the Trump Court declares unions illegal.
Well, Bernie and Ed and Liz feed them that nonsense
They do not. They are not Jill Steins.
What a moronic take, x2.
The operative word here is moronic.
I haven’t seen any of them going to the media to trash Biden. From what I read they have been working with his administration, not sabotaging it.
Electing Trump resulted in Biden who has passed some of the most progressive economic legislation in decades. So it appears they were right and as usual, HRC was wrong.
American voters aren't just stupid, they are narcissistic children.
When they vote, they want the same results as when they order something from Amazon.
I have kids in college. I was speaking with one of my daughter's friends (~ 21 yr old).
This young woman complained that Biden 'could have issued an executive order, basically day one, for broad debt relief. Instead he waited more than a year to address debt relief, and had a slow rollout of the program. The delay allowed Republican opposition and resulted in no debt relief. Biden's program was designed to fail'
While I don't agree with her point of view, I imagine her perspective is not unique.
A lot of people seem to forget that the Supreme Court exists, and that it reverses what presidents want all the time.
The Supreme Court regularly rewriting legislation and administrative policies is not a long standing tradition...people can be excused for not 'remembering' this relatively new (and self granted) expansion of the Courts scope.
Why wouldn't you be mad at somebody who tried and failed? Maybe not enough not to vote for them relative to Trump but failure is still failure
Considering the reason they have such debt is a State issue and they perceive it as a Federal one cause the Feds tried to cover the cost gap, it's unsurprising that they're complaining about the wrong thing. Sanders doesn't help when he treats higher education funding as a Federal issue.
How has the entire US Federal Government not treated higher education as a federal issue since the GI Bill?
I would say to young voters,
You will never see a presidency more to your liking than Joe Bidens'.
Take what you can get or you will get nothing.
That is a terrible sales pitch. The other side is promising to burn down the system that fails to keep their promises, and people will choose it.
I don't know what promises you're thinking about, as opposed to a promise to destroy everything the whole force of the wingnut population will be motivated to carry out.