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Biden can still do things on loan forgiveness [1]

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Date: 2023-06-30  

As people are no doubt aware, the SCOTUS rejected Biden’s loan forgiveness program along partisan lines, with all six conservative justices deciding that the program was not authorized by Congress. It is unfortunately very obvious that the conservatives on the SCOTUS are exceptionally hostile to the idea of loan forgiveness. This does not mean loan forgiveness is dead, but Biden will have to get creative on it.

The first step, in my opinion, is to look very carefully at the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007, as it does contain an option for public service loan forgiveness (which I took advantage of). While this law defines what kind of jobs qualify, it does so in a general sense, which means jobs could be redefined to fit the qualifying categories, which I have listed below.

Emergency management

Government

Military service

Public safety

Law enforcement

Public health

Public education

Social work (in a public child or family service agency)

Public interest law services

Public child care

Public service for individuals with disabilities

Public service for the elderly

Public library sciences

School-based services

Any organization that falls under the 501(c)(3) umbrella

What matters for public service forgiveness is if 120 loan payments (even loan payments which were $0) were made while the person was employed at a job under one of these categories. In addition, the job has to be full-time, but in practice a “full time job” is not defined by any law except the Affordable Care Act (and that only for purposes of health care, not student loans). As an example, teaching jobs usually consider “full time” to be 12 hours a week. In addition, I found nothing stating

So as an example, Biden could create a federal program to help qualify people for PSLF through volunteer work. My thinking is that this would be designed as something people could do on top of a regular job without being too onerous in terms of work requirements.

I won’t pretend this is going to be easy, especially since I’m not an expert on the law. But I believe there’s room to maneuver here as far as finding creative ways to allow people to seek loan forgiveness. And it’s going to be necessary — the SCOTUS made this decision, but there will be far too many people ready to blame Biden for it (thanks in no small part to a complicit news media).

Lastly, this gives us an incentive to work hard to elect more and better Democrats so we can get loan forgiveness and many other things passed through Congress. I won’t lie, the situation is pretty awful, but ultimately it’s up to us as the voters to get this done.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/30/2178568/-Biden-can-still-do-things-on-loan-forgiveness

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