Thread by @dcpetterson

President Biden is reportedly working on a plan to cancel a significant amount of student debt for low-income or underprivileged people who attended HBCU's or public colleges.

This won't satisfy the rich white kids, but it's what he's promised to do.

1/9
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

By the way, we need a word other than "cancel" for what can be done. The debt doesn't go away; it's not "cancelled"; taxpayers pay it off. This is why it should apply only to lower- or middle-income people, not privileged kids attending expensive private colleges.

2/9

Biden's plan (very likely) will only apply to federally-financed loans, not to money lent by private or commercial interests.

There are, by the way, already significant programs designed to relieve loans for economic hardship or because of predatory lenders.

3/9

Those programs are administered by the Secretary of Education, and since January of 2021 when Biden took office, $17 billion in student loans have already been cancelled. (You need to apply to these programs to get debt relief.)

4/9

President Biden continues to extend the pause on repayment of student loans. This pause was intended to be temporary, and was instituted by the CARES Act in early 2020 to help students impacted by the COVID pandemic.

Note, the pause was created by Congressional action.

5/9

The pause was always meant to be temporary, and to deal with issues created by COVID. It is extended by presidential order, an action which was authorized by the CARES Act in early 2020.

It was not created by presidential order, and not done because student debt is evil.

6/9

This welcome pause in student debt payments was never intended to become a permanent form of relief, and was also never attended to address the issues of student debt. It was intended solely to help low-income individual and the economy to recover from the COVID recession.

7/9

The plan President Biden is currently working on is part of his larger effort to restructure and rethink American education, including universal pre-K, school lunches, better funding for public schools, and possibly free trade school and community colleges.

#BidenDelivers

8/9

Afterthought: Note that President Biden has extended the pause on student loan payments every time the end date has been reached. I see no reason he won't continue to extend it, until the issue has been more substantially addressed.

9/9

If you need relief now, here is a link supplied by a commenter, where you can learn about the programs that currently exist, and the modifications made to those programs by the Biden Administration.

https://twitter.com/carrybeyond/status/1519401220498239488