1. I was the first lawyer here to advertise consumer bankruptcy in the newspaper. My perspective on student debt controversy comes after a journey most pundits simply never took. As long as I have practiced these loans have been non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. But the way they
2. were administered in the old days by financial aid departments kept the amount of the loans manageable. Then, after the liar loan mortgage crisis around 2009, money that lenders were holding for home loans that was jammed up over new lending requirements started going to go to
3. education loans. Feeding the push was the securitization industry that rushed to package federally guaranteed educational loans, just like mortgage loans. We allowed banks and schools to over-lend to people who had no reasonable way to ever repay it.
4. If you buy a house you can't afford you might be foreclosed and have to move. In states that have deficiency statutes you might decide to file a Chapter 7 and discharge it, but you could start over. Not with student loans. You're stuck. So the banks shifted and instead
5. of a home securing the funds lent they started a push with the schools that had us pledge our kids' flesh and blood to the lenders, indentured by federal law. No way to go through a foreclosure and be free of it.
6. You might think it's like taxes but for income taxes after 3 years you can usually discharge them. Not a school loan. It's like pocketing the IRS employee trust fund taxes but with no wrongdoing just a debt you can't afford to repay.
7. And the bankers and some schools got rich. But for me, knowing what was coming, I was watching in horror.
We need amendments on the floor of the House Senate when budget season arrives to repeal 11 USC 523(a)(8). It will cause shockwaves in banking industry and shockwaves
8. in the Senate and House when every GOP member in the 2024 becomes hated by a whole lot of their constituents when they vote no. And when the banks come to try to block it, we'll expose them and the members who take their money.
9. By running the table in 2024 we'll eventually answer John Roberts and his GOP sugar daddies by discharging the debt and making the US taxpayers fund preschool to 4 years of training or college as a national civil right.
10. And to pay for it we'll wipe out the all the tax cuts started with Reagan and make the SCOTUS majority's billionaire pals pay for it with 70% top rates. And when people of color can't get into Harvard they can still get a free quality 4 year degree and never owe a dime.
11. We should never react to something like these offenses as if we're powerless. With a plan we can make the people controlling SCOTUS scream bloody murder. @POTUS @SenSherrodBrown @RepMaxineWaters
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.
