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40 million people struggling under the burden of student debt got the news today that the relief promised to them by President Biden would not be coming. The Supreme Court just ruled that President Biden's student loan forgiveness plan is unconstitutional.
This is a devastating if unsurprising development for many of the most vulnerable Americans burdened with educational debt. Education is one of the most impactful vehicles to increase individual freedom and stimulate the greatness of our nation. And yet, increasingly, it is a luxury good available only to the wealthy.
It should be obvious to us all that this is un-American. Once upon a time, not long ago, the cost of a college education in the United States was affordable—because the government made it so. From the 1940s through the 1960s, the federal government made more of an investment in college education, which kept the cost low. We can get those days back and more with a serious targeted-approach to ensuring that all Americans, regardless of economic background, have a right to an excellent public education.
As the lines between the haves and have nots become starker, it is crucial that our national social contract in the realm of education is expanded to include pathways of true economic mobility without the poorest among us graduating with a degree in one hand and debt in the other. This will require a paradigm shift in our educational investment to a pre-K to college model. And like any major investment, resources will be required.
It is dispiriting that the President's first attempt at making such an investment was shot down by the unelected Supreme Court. Worse for Americans who still believe that a good education is the path to the American Dream, House and Senate Republicans have introduced their own plan for student loans. In the House, the plan is called "The Federal Assistance to Initiate Repayment Act" and the Senate plan is referred to as "The Lowering Education Costs and Debt Act." The titles of these bills reflect how unserious the Republicans are about solving the student debt crisis.
The Senate plan in particular is a package of five bills that can be summed-up as a brew of informational musings. There is nothing in this plan that changes current realities for student borrowers, nor does it address future pressures of the outrageously high cost of a college education. For example, two of the bills in the package address how students are informed about the loans they are planning to take out, and another requires financial aid departments to inform students about the "true cost of college."
There is nothing revolutionary about either of these proposals. Moreover, no reckoning is demanded here for the predatory lending practices of the financial sector that was enabled to rip students off for profit for generations with a high-five assist from the federal government.
As a nation, we got entangled in this mess by public policy, and the only way to remove barriers and correct missteps and misdeeds is through robust policy plans that center the needs of college students, their families, and the larger community.
Both Republican plans are cloaked on the premise of "helping hardworking folks," yet there is nothing about their plan that helps hard working folks. It is all a mirage, true to form for most GOP proposals these days. If you are not among the mega-rich and the corporate elite, Republicans (and neo-liberal Democrats, to be sure) have no substantive plans to change your material conditions.
If Republicans were truly serious about helping everyday people of this nation, they would not starve the federal government by giving the biggest tax breaks to the ultra wealthy. One of the proposals they put forth during the debt ceiling debate was to make permanent the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, "the top 5 percent would receive $112.6 billion in tax cuts in the first year, more than the entire bottom 80 percent."
So much for helping working folks.
The Republicans would be wise to stop playing political games and start instituting policies that lift the masses in a way that increases the likelihood that more people will be on the credit-side of the ledger and not the debt-side of the ledger. Lucky for them, ideas about how we solve the student college debt crisis have already been proposed by thought-leaders and experts who really care about solving this conundrum.
They should listen to Robert Reich, labor secretary during the Clinton Administration, who reminds us that this nation once treated higher education as a public good. The most robust model we have is the educational elements of the 1944 GI Bill: The federal government made a big investment in ensuring that our veterans could transition back into civilian life with the best opportunities for success. The return on investment was enormous, and we could have a similar return on investment by taking this idea and expanding it to all Americans.
Reich's other recommendations include allowing students to refinance their loans at lower interest rates, letting borrowers utilize bankruptcy where needed, linking loan repayment amounts to an individual's earnings, and creating a tuition-free system at public colleges and universities.
If the Republican Party believes in the freedom they purport to, they have an opportunity to push public policy in a way that helps working people. If they need help, which is obvious, these words from President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his 1944 State of the Union address to Congress hits the mark: "True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry, people who are out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
A party that truly valued independence and freedom would recognize how dangerous student debt has become, and come up with a real plan to do something about it.
The Honorable Nina Turner is a former Ohio State Senator. In 2016 and 2020, she served as a national surrogate and national co-chair for Senator Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns. Currently, she is a senior fellow at the The New School Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
