US Politics: The Republicans problem with small packages

[Martell Spy]

Schumer, White House at odds over how to cancel student loan debt
Schumer is ramping up pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per borrower “with the flick of a pen” through executive action.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/04/schumer-biden-student-loan-debt-466054

Quote

 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House are divided over how to move forward in the coming months on a key progressive priority: canceling large swaths of the outstanding $1.5 trillion of federal student loan debt.

The conflict forecasts a looming fight over student loan forgiveness that could be a major test of how far progressives can push President Joe Biden, who has sought to cast himself as a bipartisan dealmaker and unifier.

 

 

[Mindwalker]

Rep. Dean Phillips about an epiphany he had during the insurrection, in his remarks during a special order hour organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to share their experiences of January 6, 2021

 

[Guy Kilmore]

16 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Rep. Dean Phillips about an epiphany he had during the insurrection, in his remarks during a special order hour organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to share their experiences of January 6, 2021

 

I'm glad he is my representative and we got the jerkface that was here out of office.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

39 minutes ago, Guy Kilmore said:

I'm glad he is my representative and we got the jerkface that was here out of office.

You mean you don't miss the “I’m a numbers guy who can’t do math” and “vote for me because my daughters are cute” guy? I’m shocked.

[Fez]

7 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Schumer, White House at odds over how to cancel student loan debt
Schumer is ramping up pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per borrower “with the flick of a pen” through executive action.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/04/schumer-biden-student-loan-debt-466054

 

I'm partially with the White House on this one. The argument over the loans that can be cancelled through executive action are just the ones held through federal lenders, like Sallie Mae and Navient. It does nothing for privately held student loans; just like the interest forgiveness and other benefits that have been going on over the past year haven't applied to privately held student loans either. And those can't be waived away, because the US government doesn't control them, instead there would need to be new federal funding to pay off the private lenders. New funding requires Congress.

There's no reason to delay the good for the perfect, so I'm fine with executive action too. But I don't want that to happen and then for everyone to forget about all loans that weren't forgiven.

[Maithanet]

I also feel like the unfairness of forgiving some loans and not others for a reason as arbitrary as whether the US govt controls it is very bad politics.  I understand the argument that some loan forgiveness is better than none, but this seems like the kind of half-measure that will piss off just about everybody. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I also wonder how people who are in my position will react. I went gangbusters the first five years out of college to pay off nearly my entire debt. People who did the same thing are going to be put off by others just having their debts forgiven.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I havent read the WaPo op-ed myself, but apparently Larry Summer, one of the architects of the too-small stimulus of 2009 (something he notes himself) feels this stimulus is too large.

Should we be paying attention to economists saying such things? Would be nice if we could talk about what the downfalls are of a 'too-large' stimulus. Some sort of inflationary death-sprial like in the Weimar republic? Another big steps towards debt-trap status? I dont have a WaPo subscription, so maybe he does address this.

[Jaxom 1974]

25 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I also wonder how people who are in my position will react. I went gangbusters the first five years out of college to pay off nearly my entire debt. People who did the same thing are going to be put off by others just having their debts forgiven.

Not everyone is getting the kind of work, let alone the type of pay necessary for that work, to pay off debt like gangbusters. 

[Ran]

2 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Should we be paying attention to economists saying such things? Would be nice if we could talk about what the downfalls are of a 'too-large' stimulus. Some sort of inflationary death-sprial like in the Weimar republic? Another big steps towards debt-trap status? I dont have a WaPo subscription, so maybe he does address this.

There's an interesting commentary from an economist, part of a progressive think-tank, responding to Summers and so on:

https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkVinPaul/status/1357676372005703680

Interesting reading, and pretty persuasive to me, but I mostly read people who are on his side of the argument. I do find it hard to sustain serious concern about overheating the economy or rampant inflation after years of incredibly low (even negative) interest rates and so on. At some point we'll hit an equilibrium, I suppose, and then pass the tipping point... but as he suggests, there are tools ready to hand to ease off the pedal, and right now there's no reason not to just put the pedal to the metal.

[mormont]

39 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I also wonder how people who are in my position will react. I went gangbusters the first five years out of college to pay off nearly my entire debt. People who did the same thing are going to be put off by others just having their debts forgiven.

Are you put off by that?

It's not like those people who still have debt would all have spent those five years lazing on the sofa, spending their money on takeout food and whisky.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah, using weasel phrases like "inflationary pressures never seen in a generation" is not very precise is it? Why dont economists just come out and say stuff like "this stimulus will raise the price of common goods like bread by 25%"?

I think Summer's second point has a bit more merit, which is that there may not be enough appetite, or indeed economic capital to implement other aspects of the progressive agenda. But that is the bind we are in with the coronavirus, and also why we have 2 terms.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I'm partially with the White House on this one. The argument over the loans that can be cancelled through executive action are just the ones held through federal lenders, like Sallie Mae and Navient. It does nothing for privately held student loans; just like the interest forgiveness and other benefits that have been going on over the past year haven't applied to privately held student loans either. And those can't be waived away, because the US government doesn't control them, instead there would need to be new federal funding to pay off the private lenders. New funding requires Congress.

There's no reason to delay the good for the perfect, so I'm fine with executive action too. But I don't want that to happen and then for everyone to forget about all loans that weren't forgiven.

Yeah, probably the most important thing is to restore the ability to discharge private student loan debt in bankruptcy. It's not like going bankrupt is some island vacation. Congress just callously stripped a basic protection from a certain class of people it disfavored at the time, just at the same time that the for-profit college industry was purposely weighing down students with these types of loans.

 

Funny thing is, I've long hoped for that to be restored, but even if it was I wouldn't likely take it. I'm in a better position now and I'd rather take the deal I was offered from the lender than destroy my credit in bankruptcy.

[Fez]

11 minutes ago, mormont said:

Are you put off by that?

It's not like those people who still have debt would all have spent those five years lazing on the sofa, spending their money on takeout food and whisky.

Personally, I'm not put off by that. But I do believe that people who have been paying off their student loans should be made whole as well if there's any large-scale forgiveness program.

ETA: typo.

[S John]

9 minutes ago, Fez said:

Personally, I'm not put off by that. But I do believe that people who have been paying off their student loans should be made whole as well if there's any large-scale forgiveness program.

ETA: typo.

Yea that’s kind of how I feel. I have paid my loans but the need for loans and the repayment of them also set my family back financially perhaps as much as a decade. I know it is not the popular opinion here but I’m not afraid to say I am absolutely put out by that. I’m not wealthy, my parents don’t have money, my wife’s parents don’t have money. The outrageous costs of education have affected us regardless of the balance due.

We bought a house this year at age 36. On a 30 year mortgage, if we pay the minimum due on schedule we will be nearly 70 before it is paid for. The reason we are just now getting into the housing market at age 36 vs, say, age 26 is that hundreds of dollars per month of our income was out the door for student loans for the first 15 years of our professional lives. Both of us went out of our way to pay more on our loans whenever possible in order to clear them and get to the point where we could buy a house. While we may have paid them off at this point that doesn’t change the fact that we faced the same struggle as those who have not yet paid theirs off.

I would honestly feel like a fool having gone out of my way to pay more than the minimum on my loans only to have to government come along and forgive them for everyone else. I could have invested the extra money that went into paying off debt - debt that I ultimately did agree to, by the way - into buying a house, into retirement, into a college fund for my kid, etc.

Unless the government is going to throw a bone to people like me and my wife then they are ultimately picking winners and losers and, in this case, the losers would be the dumbasses who went out of their way to pay back their debt. It’s a shit precedent, IMO.

I’m not opposed to doing something regarding student loan debt, but it needs to be carefully considered.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

52 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Not everyone is getting the kind of work, let alone the type of pay necessary for that work, to pay off debt like gangbusters. 

The first six months out of college I had a full-time unpaid internship and a part-time $15 an hour job. The internship turned into a $30k salaried position that was a minimum of 60 hours of work per week, seven days a week. In that five year window I never made more than $40k per year if you don’t include benefits. And yet I still payed off most of my $50k or so debt.

39 minutes ago, mormont said:

Are you put off by that?

It's not like those people who still have debt would all have spent those five years lazing on the sofa, spending their money on takeout food and whisky.

Not terribly, but I can still say it’s unfair and you’re mistaken if you think there won’t be a lot of people that would be pissed off about it.  

Everyone’s situation is different. I have several friends I graduated with 10 years ago who still have a ton of debt, complain about it all the time, but then go and take a weeklong vacation at an all-inclusive resort in Mexico.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

24 minutes ago, S John said:

Yea that’s kind of how I feel. I have paid my loans but the need for loans and the repayment of them also set my family back financially perhaps as much as a decade. I know it is not the popular opinion here but I’m not afraid to say I am absolutely put out by that. I’m not wealthy, my parents don’t have money, my wife’s parents don’t have money. The outrageous costs of education have affected us regardless of the balance due.

We bought a house this year at age 36. On a 30 year mortgage, if we pay the minimum due on schedule we will be nearly 70 before it is paid for. The reason we are just now getting into the housing market at age 36 vs, say, age 26 is that hundreds of dollars per month of our income was out the door for student loans for the first 15 years of our professional lives. Both of us went out of our way to pay more on our loans whenever possible in order to clear them and get to the point where we could buy a house. While we may have paid them off at this point that doesn’t change the fact that we faced the same struggle as those who have not yet paid theirs off.

I would honestly feel like a fool having gone out of my way to pay more than the minimum on my loans only to have to government come along and forgive them for everyone else. I could have invested the extra money that went into paying off debt - debt that I ultimately did agree to, by the way - into buying a house, into retirement, into a college fund for my kid, etc.

Unless the government is going to throw a bone to people like me and my wife then they are ultimately picking winners and losers and, in this case, the losers would be the dumbasses who went out of their way to pay back their debt. It’s a shit precedent, IMO.

I’m not opposed to doing something regarding student loan debt, but it needs to be carefully considered.

This is more or less how I feel, but I’m not as resentful because I paid them off a lot faster, had some help from my family and I got scholarships from being in the honors system and carrying a 3.9 GPA. But I still sacrificed a lot over that time period to do it. I lived in a dump studio apartment for years. I drove the same car I had in college, which was already around 15 years old when I graduated. I skipped trips with friends. I didn’t upgrade my tech gear except for when I had to. I didn’t invest in anything. To do everything right and then basically get punished for it is unfair. Personally I’d be fine if the end result is a total overhaul of the system so that I could go to law or grad school for a reasonable price, but it would be disappointing if there was no reward for paying off your loans ahead of time.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I also wonder how people who are in my position will react. I went gangbusters the first five years out of college to pay off nearly my entire debt. People who did the same thing are going to be put off by others just having their debts forgiven.

I'm not going to lose any sleep over people being grumpy about others getting something for the government.  The rich get that shit all the time, homeowners get the mortgage interest rate deduction.  I've been chipping away at my debt on a degree I never finished, mostly through manual labor.  I have repeated stress fractures in one foot and have broken my hand several times at work.  My rotator cuffs are both shot from working overhead.  I'll be 38 in two months.

My student loans were pretty much the main reason I've never been able to get a car loan.  Getting rid of my debt would be life changing.  I've paid off over $30k of loans and interest but I'm not going to be upset I'm not getting reimbursed for it.

I hope they do eliminate privately held debt too.  Also, this is a racial justice issue, I read recently black women are something like twice as likely to hold student loans and more likely to owe over 25k.

I think the bigger question is how do we keep this from happening again with present and future students?

[GrimTuesday]

I had polio, so it bothers me that we are going to stop other people from having polio.

Sorry, but I don't care about those who paid off their loans already. It fucking sucks, and while I would support a measure to reimburse people for some or all of what they have paid back in loans, removing the existing burden of student debt from those being crushed by it is more important than your feelings.

[GrimTuesday]

FYI for anyone who saw their income drop between 2019 and 2020. File your taxes ASAP