Student Debt Relief Helps Working And Middle Class; Republicans Mad

 

Contrary to much of the disinformation being spread out there, a new analysis shows that it's primarily working and middle class borrowers who will benefit from President Biden's student loan debt relief plan:

President Joe Biden's student loan debt relief plan is expected to help mainly working and middle class borrowers, an updated report from an influential research group found. That's a shift from its earlier projection that more higher-income borrowers would benefit from basic loan forgiveness.

About 75% of the benefit will go to households making $88,000 or less per year, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model analysis released Friday.

 

The three-part relief package could cost up to $605 billion over 10 years, though the price tag could exceed $1 trillion depending on how the proposed income-driven repayment program is actually set up and how many people participate, Penn Wharton found. That's substantially higher than its initial estimate of a less comprehensive debt relief plan.

 

The revised report takes into account the plan's provision that would forgive up to $20,000 of debt held by those who qualified for Pell grants as undergraduates, as well as the measure to forgive up to $10,000 for those who did not receive such grants.

It was the added provision of the Pell grants, which are directed more toward lower income borrowers, that shifted the potential benefits toward working and middle class students.  This isn't full debt cancellation by any means, but it's going to help a lot of people who desperately need some relief -- not the upper crusty Ivy League alums working at Goldman Sachs, as Republicans would have you believe.

The pause on loan repayments, initiated to ease financial burdens brought on by the covid pandemic, was extended to December 31.

 

We've seen the strong pushback from various folks, including the White House Twitter account, pointing to the blatant hypocrisy of Republican office holders and right- wing bloviators who received loan forgiveness for their PPP loans.  Now, Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times puts some more of the "I got mine, too bad about you" philosophy of the 1%er Republican Party on display:

They’ve been assailing the plan as an undue burden on American taxpayers.

There isn’t much to say about this argument, aside from this: They have some nerve.

We can say so because some of the loudest voices attacking the proposal are those of GOP senators and representatives who got their own university degrees courtesy of huge subsidies from taxpayers. 

They’re graduates of public state universities, generally in the era when in-state tuition at those institutions was far, far lower than it is today, even accounting for inflation. Who picked up the tab back then? Taxpayers, that’s who.  [snip]

The bottom 50% of households, who report $41,000 or less in taxable income, pay only 3.1% of federal income taxes (but a much larger share of payroll taxes, which aren’t affected by student loan forgiveness).

That helps explain why Republicans are so exercised about Biden’s plan, which would concentrate financial relief on middle- and working-class families.

The Republicans don’t care about them, except as pawns in a political battle; they care about their patrons, the rich. It’s the latter who will pay for the student loan relief. Should they have our sympathy? Not after they received an enormous handout via the Republican tax cuts of 2017.

What gets overlooked in all the discussion of the student debt crisis is the value of higher education, access to which is ostensibly the goal of America’s clumsy financing system. Republicans obviously understand that value, since so many of them sought support from their home state taxpayers to acquire it. 

They just want today’s generation of students and their families to pay full-price, unlike themselves.  (our emphasis)

Forever lying, dividing and punching down:  your *semi-fascist* Republican Party, folks.

BONUS:  As Gene notes in comments, the oleaginous weasel and representative of the "working man's party" Sen. Ted "Cancun" Cruz had his revealing comments about who would benefit from the loan relief.