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‘The View’ guest co-host wants answers on student debt relief: ‘Where do I sign up for reimbursement?’

May 7, 2022 | | Print Article

A guest co-host on “The View” pressed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Friday about her support for President Joe Biden eliminating millions in student loan debt, asking the lawmaker whether those who also secured student loans but subsequently paid them off will receive a “reimbursement” as well.

“You’ve been fiercely advocating for the president to cancel student loan debts, but really, only 13 percent of Americans even have federal student loan debt,” guest co-host Lindsey Granger, a TV personality, pointed out.

“So is this really the best way to reach most voters? And also, what do you say to someone like me who worked two jobs for a decade to pay off all their student loans? Just finished. Where do I sign up for reimbursement?” she then asked.

Warren replied by fudging the numbers.

“So let’s start out with who has student loans today. About 40 percent of the folks with student loans don’t have a college diploma. They’re folks who tried, and life happened: Pregnancies, they were already working two jobs and lost one of them, mom got sick, family had to move somewhere else,” she said.

“And now they earn what a high school grad earns, and they’re trying to pay off college-level debt, and it is crushing their bones. Keep in mind that of those who have student loan debt, more than half have negative wealth. They don’t have any wealth,” she added.

Co-host Joy Behar then chimed in, saying, “And then still also a lot of them are over 50, I was reading.”

Playing off what Behar had said, Warren continued, “Right now there are tens of thousands of people who are living on Social Security who are having their Social Security checks garnished to pay student loans. And so this, for me, is a question of fairness.”

“There was a time in America when we invested in our public colleges and universities,” she added. “That’s how I could go to a college that cost $50 a semester, pay for it on part time jobs. But today, that option is not out there for our young people. So this is about saying, look, it’s tough. We understand that. We want to invest in you. We want to invest in your getting an education.”

Listen:

Not mentioned by Warren was that even the Brookings Institution, a fairly left-wing organization, has admitted that student loan forgiveness would be “regressive,” meaning it would benefit the wealthy far more than the working class.

“[S]tudent debt is concentrated among high-wealth households and loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, educational attainment, or wealth. Across-the-board forgiveness is therefore a costly and ineffective way to reduce economic gaps by race or socioeconomic status,” a working paper from the Brookings Institution published in January reads.

Warren has, however, previously indicated that either she doesn’t care about or doesn’t believe in these facts.

It appears she cares only about the narrative that forcing people to pay off their debts like everybody else is unfair.

The problem, critics say, is that it’s equally unfair to transfer the burden of the debt from the debtor to the American taxpayers, particularly those taxpayers who either never got a loan in the first place or who already paid off their own loans.

The good news for critics is that, according to former Obama administration official Charlie Rose, the president may lack the authority to cancel student loan debt.

“If the issue is litigated, the more persuasive analyses tend to support the conclusion that the Executive Branch likely does not have the unilateral authority to engage in mass student debt cancellation,” he wrote last year in an internal memo that has since been leaked to The Wall Street Journal.

The president has nevertheless promised to cancel at least $10,000 of student loan debt “in a couple of weeks” for those earning up to $125,000 or less.

Vivek Saxena
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