US Reacts To Biden’s Inadequate Socialist Student Debt Relief That’s Too Little/Will Bankrupt America

Yesterday, after months of planning and internal debate, the Biden administration announced its plan to forgive federal student loan debt by $10,000 for most borrowers with incomes under $125,000 a year (or $250,000 filing jointly). Folks who received Pell Grants will be eligible for up to $20,000 of loan relief, and for undergraduate loans, the plan will also create a new cap on income-based repayment of five percent of a borrower’s monthly discretionary income. The cap had previously been 10 percent.

For all the deets, here’s a White House fact sheet on the forgiveness plan. The program will provide debt relief to almost 43 million Americans, and about half of them, roughly 20 million, will see their student debt forgiven altogether. Nearly 90 percent of the debt cancellation will go to folks making less than $75,000, so keep that in mind when you hear Republicans talking about how this will only help the Rich Elites. The rich get bupkis, and just having gone to college hardly makes anyone an “elite.”

Let The Gaslighting Begin!

Oh, look, it’s an idiot who thinks “real Americans” have no student debt, because they’d never be caught dead in a university, especially not one with a wrestling team.

Again, just going to remind everyone that the biggest beneficiaries of the debt forgiveness program will be folks whose family income was low enough to qualify for Pell Grants. They are not wealthy.

GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn also joined in on the pretended class warfare, calling the debt relief “another gift to the rich” and insisting that “Tennesseans should not be forced to pay for coastal elites to get their PhD in gender studies.”

There was a LOT of gender panic in rightwing tweets, because higher education just fills young people’s heads with Marxism and drag queens. Fact check: Tennessee has people who went to college, even if it is not on a coast! We also liked the many replies pointing out that Blackburn, then a member of the House, voted for Donald Trump’s 2017 Big Fat Tax Cuts For Rich Fuckwads, too.

Speaking of disingenuous jerks, probably the most sweepingly terrible take came from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who led the 2017 drive to pass Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations. In a statement posted to Twitter, McConnell called student debt relief a “slap in the face to working Americans who sacrificed to pay their debt or made different career choices to avoid debt” — by which he meant jointing the military, which operates without taxpayer funds somehow. Please ignore too the fact that many veterans have student loans too, because the GI Bill doesn’t cover all the costs of college.

McConnell also lied that the program is a “wildly unfair redistribution of wealth toward higher-earning people,” which again, ignores the reality that almost 90 percent of those qualifying for debt relief make less than $75,000 annually. In fact, as the White House’s fact sheet notes, more than half of the debt forgiveness will be available to the 27 million borrowers who had Pell Grants and therefore qualify for up to $20,000 in relief.

Always an expert at lying with partial truths, McConnell slickly conflates “people with student loans” and “people who’ll benefit most from this loan relief” by noting that the median income of Americans who have student debt is higher than the overall US median income, which sure sounds like debt forgiveness might help rich people until you remember that raw median figure includes really well-off people who will not qualify at all for the program.

Also, because he is just that evil, McConnell peppered his statement with the made-up phrase “student loan socialism” to suggest that only a socialist would take out loans at interest, resulting in strange formulations like the claim that “the overwhelming benefit of student loan socialism flows to higher-earning Americans” — which again, is just plain not true. For good measure, McConnell even suggests that the $125,000 upper limit on who can receive the benefit is somehow the norm, saying, “Democrats specifically wrote this policy to make sure that people earning six figures would benefit.”

Let’s say it once more: Bullshit: The debt relief is targeted at middle- and working-class borrowers. People who went to trade school and community college, even. Have a damn chart from the fact sheet and go fuck your shell-covered self, Senator.

Also, Non-Jerks Weighed In!

On the saner side of the street, some of the biggest backers of student debt relief were glad to see Biden’s announcement, even as they called for further reforms to the insane way we pay for college in this country. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has long called for complete student loan forgiveness, welcomed the program, calling it a “big deal” that would provide “real financial help for a struggling middle class,” but added that in the long term, we need to have free tuition for public universities, community colleges, and trade schools, like a bunch of damn Europeans.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who made $50,000 in debt relief a central part of her 2020 presidential campaign, was over the moon at the news.

Today is a day of joy and relief.

President Biden is cancelling up to $20,000 of federal student debt for as many as 43 million Americans — a powerful step to help rebuild the middle class.

This will be transformative for the lives of working people all across this country.

Warren went on to note that the debt cancellation will help people who had to borrow to go to college “because they didn’t come from wealthy families,” and that it will also “help narrow the racial wealth gap among borrowers.” Damn straight.

But for the very best demonstration of why debt relief is a very good thing, just take a look at the many people tweeting about how this is going to affect them, and not in a hypothetical “I paid my loans and I feel wahhh” sense, but in terms of real improvements for real people’s futures. There are a whole lot of them in the replies to this thread by writer Roxane Gay. A few examples:

My daughter just graduated undergrad and owes $27k because her Pell Grants weren’t enough. This relief will make it doable so that her dad and I can help her pay back the $7k and start life without debt over her head.

It´s big for my kids as well, one who graduated and one who dropped out due to Covid related anxiety. This is big for our family, and many others.

Critics of this from the right don´t realize how many people of modest means and class have someone in their family who benefits.

I was lucky enough to pay mine off a few years ago but I was so excited to call my sister and tell her she should qualify for full forgiveness on what she had left to pay. Why can’t people just have empathy?

All of mine should be gone. I could weep with the relief. I’m still in debt, due to medical bills, and I’m still behind on rent, but this feels like a step in the right direction for my life.

So many ordinary folks are going to be so much better off thanks to student debt cancellation. How dare anyone call these families — 43 million of them! — “elitists” or “lazy” or otherwise undeserving of the opportunities they and their kids will have.

This is a terrific step toward dealing with a huge problem that affects tens of millions of Americans. Damn right we’re happy.

[White House / Fortune / Photo: Bryan Alexander, Creative Commons License 2.0]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month, and we’ll keep finding you all the hopey-changey stuff that’s out there.

Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.