Is Student Loan Forgiveness A Necessary Policy Change or Selfish Act?
Summary from the AllSides News Team
As President Joe Biden evaluates different options to substantially relieve federal student loan debt, Americans are debating the effectiveness of loan forgiveness.
Although Biden pledged during his presidential campaign to forgive at least $10,000 in student loan debt for every borrower, his administration has since taken a more moderate approach. The freeze on federal student loan payments has been extended six times since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and payments are currently set to resume on Sept. 1. In the meantime, a number of progressive Democrats have been pushing the Biden administration to take serious action and cancel federal student debt in its entirety. 85% of young Americans favor some form of government action on student loan debt while only 38% favor total debt cancellation, according to a recent Harvard University poll.
One NBC News (Lean Left bias) writer called the debate around student loan forgiveness a "manifestation of our country’s fetish for individualism." The op-ed also highlighted how previous generations should be "fortunate that they were able to pay off their loans during "a far more forgiving economy" and that loan forgiveness "assists those who’ve backed their loved ones’ educational debt." Conversely, an opinion writer for National Review (Right bias) called Biden's plan "a politically, and cosmically, unjustifiable robbery" that "tears directly at the social fabric" of the American class system. They argued that this policy would be a "grotesque gift to the rich" as the "overwhelming majority of student debt is held by the affluent."
Featured Coverage of this Story
From the Right
Student-Debt Amnesty Is a Grotesque Gift to the RichThe plan being mulled by the Biden administration to cancel and forgive up to $1.6 trillion of federal student-loan debt is a brazen act of class warfare by the affluent against everyone else. It is a politically, and cosmically, unjustifiable robbery that offers yet more rope for the decadent and totally indefensible American college system to become even more decadent and indefensible.
The overwhelming majority of student debt is held by the affluent; less than 10 percent of it is held by the bottom third of earners. Nearly 40 percent of it is...
From the Left
The selfish and extreme reactions in response to Biden’s student debt reliefWhen news broke Tuesday that the Biden administration was going to relax the rules of certain student loan repayment plans, thereby forgiving federal loans for 40,000 borrowers and offering 3.6 million people credit toward paying off their balances, I thought of my close friends and students who’ve been knee-deep in education-related debt for almost their entire adult lives. Several of them have had to choose between buying a home and paying off their student loans (the loans have always won out). In more extreme cases, I’ve known people who chose to default on...
From the Center
Student loan forgiveness must target the needy. Profligate collegiate spenders must pay the piper.Attacking “waste, fraud and abuse” is a common promise made by both parties, but too often forgotten after the campaigning is over. On the touchy issue of student loan debt forgiveness, President Joe Biden can hardly afford to forget.
On the one hand, everyone knows that debt from student loans is raging out of control. On the other, Democrats don’t want to further compound their popularity problems by forgiving Ivy League tuition for elite big spenders while dinging those who chose to live within their means at college, or who...
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