comment: >
  
  There is an enormous lawsuit against ITT Tech. From a report mentioned by Forbes: "The report details how ITT Tech systematically defrauded millions of students over decades, abused the federal financial aid system and left students weighed down with student loan debt and worthless credentials."
  However -- even if it were not the case of a fraudulent institution, COVID caused millions of people financial distress. Layoffs, sickness, having to isolate, taking care of elderly relatives....and on and on. 
  And then, who do you think the superrich stole from to keep getting richer? The slow drain of higher rents, loan interest, jacking up the prices of other basic necessities like food, and so on from the middle / working classes made living all the more difficult. So, student loan relief - for everyone who still had a student loan payment, no matter how old or new it was, on top of all other living costs - was one way to lessen the impacts during COVID.
context: If they cannot be forgiven, can they be paused permanently. >
  
  I’d be fine with negative interest rates. They’d be gone faster than you can pay them >
  
  Wait could you tech not ‘forgive’ students loans. And just set the rate as -100% >
  
  Liberal democrats don't bend rules.  That's why they can never get anything done.  Republicans break rules, liberals say "wow that's wrong" and then can't pass anything because republicans jam them up.
  Its worth noting this is on purpose.  Corporate Democrats do not want change. They want to be seen attempting change, then get foiled, do nothing to fight back, and then point fingers at the republicans. >
  
  Yup our government is pretty much broke. We have republicans who have zero interest in even trying and we have a chunk of dems who want nothing to change. All while MAGA republicans keep gaining more and more power with each election cycle, eventually our country will be screwed >
  
  Republicans are fascists and are the worst thing.  That being said, the democrats showed their hand on true reform when they conspired to fuck Bernie and get Jim Crow Joe (LOVED locking up black people in the 90s) the nomination in 2020 just ahead of the pandemic. >
  
  Are you confident that moderate voters would’ve picked Bernie over Trump? I’m not…and I would’ve loved a Sanders presidency >
  
  If the backing came from the establishment, absolutely. 
  Americans are very easily led, even if it's against their own interests. I can't imagine they wouldnt be easily led when it's actually for their interests. >
  
  Nah Bernie would have been stomped in a national election. >
  
  
  gives absolutely zero evidence
  a wealth of information to the contrary
  immensely popular politician with popular platform
  agreed with by Fox News viewers
  constantly shown to be as competitive as Biden
  also shown to have a more popular platform than Biden
  
  Okay.
  
  young people just don’t vote
  
  It’s a consistent narrative that ignores surging youth turnout from 2018 onward. It’s a bit irrelevant given he had majority support among ALL Democrats on policy but the other consistent narrative of “he can’t win” definitely won over enough that policy victory this did not translate to actual electoral victory.
  It helped that Biden was more palatable than Hillary as the ‘centrist’ candidate and benefited greatly from the memory of his Vice Presidency, which seems to have dominated over his political career from 1974 to 2008. >
  
  Expect to be disappointed in the Supreme Court. >
  
  Congress gave the DOE the power to forgive loans in the HEROES act of 2003. >
  
  Except the law never says anything about 9/11. It says “affected by a state of emergency.” If congress had wanted it to be limited to the 9/11 state of emergency, they would have written that in there. But this law was specifically written to extend to ANY declared national state of emergency. Which COVID was and still currently is.
  Rep. George Miller, one of the architects of the law, wrote an amicus brief to SCOTUS basically saying that this is within the boundaries of the law intended when he wrote it. >
  
  Biden could just paused them for as long as he can. 
  Then when a Republican president comes in,  it will be his fault payments are restarted. >
  
  Who is going to originate new loans then? That actually might not be the worst thing. The only way to reduce college tuition is to stop financing it through taxpayer guaranteed funds. If students could only afford to take out what they can pay tuition would not be that high. >
  
  Yes and access to college would lower. Why do people keep bringing this talking point up? 
  The entire point of why we did that is to ensure everyone could access a college education. >
  
  But free flowing student loans is also why the cost of education has gone up so much. Colleges know that the government and private lenders will approve basically whatever they charge for tuition, so why not charge more? >
  
  No it isn’t. I don’t understand why so many people have trouble with this concept. 
  Why not charge more? Because thats not what moral people do. So you have the answer right there but continually blame another system for it. Greed is the problem here, and there are many ways to fix it other than allowing it to co-opt all of our policies. >
  
  Your mistake is assuming for-profit colleges are run by moral people >
  
  No, I understand they aren’t. I simply don’t throw my hands up and say whelp, guess we should just let that stop us from having any programs that are designed to help Americans. >
  
  I never said we shouldn’t have loans. But 15 years ago the federal government should have said to all accredited colleges - hey, we will cover these loans, but rates can’t rise more than x% a year or y% over an average student’s 4 year time. I don’t know how you fix it now, but something has to be done. Better late than never.
  But I can tell you that the private university I went to 15 years ago now costs 50% more per semester. And their academics and facilities have absolutely not improved to be worth that much more. But please, tell me again how people running colleges have morals >
  
  I applied for the forgiveness and found out that my loans were being outright discharged (I went to ITT but graduated in 2006 -- I thought I wasn't covered I was).  I'm waiting for mine to be cleared out and get all the money I paid into it back.  But I will never not be an ally for everyone also thrown into the predatory meat grinder known as secondary education financing. >
  
  Why the fuck should you be covered... you graduated in 06 why should you loans be forgiven for Covid in 2019- >
  
  Yeah, crazy its been 13 years and op still hasn't been able to pay them off yet. Probably because they're just lazy and not ridiculously high interest rates or unemployability. >
  
  I don't think they are lazy I just don't see what your loans have to do with Covid