Sorry, Jim Banks — we shouldn't have to die for an education

Episode 88 Sneak Peek

Looking back at then-presidential candidate Biden’s 2020 campaign promises is often, for many left and working-class advocates, like looking out over a ghost town — we recognize so many abortive or halfhearted attempts to deal with bread-and-butter issues of economic and social justice. Particularly through the various gasps of Build Back Better, most of these promises have fallen through (public option? fully funded Section 8?) — if the administration bothered to attend to them at all once Biden made it into office.

Joe Biden @JoeBiden

Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000/person of federal student loans, as proposed by Senator Warren and colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn't happen again.

But last week, the president did something immediately good for the survival of working-class people, something he promised to do as a 2020 presidential candidate (he said so online, the real deal): He cancelled $10,000 of student debt for low- and middle-income borrowers. Pell Grant recipients will receive $20,000 in debt cancellation. The pause on student loan payments has been extended a final time through the end of December of this year, but for some Americans, student debt has been wiped out overnight.

Of course, for many Americans, that debt remains — vastly exceeding $10k or $20k. This relief remains means-tested and deeply limited in scope, so that even as Biden and his administration remain aware of the dire straits that predatory loan companies put students in, they’re refusing to fully rectify the problem. On the other hand, in a piece for Jacobin, Jordan Uhl covers the all-out meltdown that the henchmen of the military-industrial complex are suffering, as student debt relief means that fewer people may be forced to go to war and risk their lives for an education. Ugly stuff, and the more we make these people mad, the better:

Jim Banks @RepJimBanks

Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.

Sounds good to us!

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