The Daily Beast Podcast - Student Loans Were Created to Punish Poor People

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

The pause on federal student loans, which about 46 million Americans have, is set to lift on January 31, 2022 and, despite advocates best efforts, Sen. Chuck Schumer included, President Joe Biden doesn’t seem to have any intention to stop it or forgive them. Melissa Byrne, the founder of Project Springboard and former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer, tells Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal why it would be so easy for him to do so, a theory why he won’t, and has strong responses to every argument people can make against it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Melissa Byrne is an advocate for canceling student debt, and she's going to break down for us what's going on with this issue. So Melissa, welcome to the new abnormal. I look forward to one day it being normal, but I'm glad to be in the abnormal with you all. One of the things you work on is student debt. Will you explain to our listeners how easy it would be for Joe Biden to cancel student debt? Yes, all he has to do is go to his desk, open the desk door,

grab a pen and sign a paper. Because he can do it by executive order. Yep. Congress in the 1960s authorized the president to be able to make decisions about the collection of federal student loan debt. So he can just decide that the government no longer wants to collect it and consider it a settlement and we can all go on to having good lives where we are going to work on things like, you know, buying homes, buying cars. starting businesses and all of that.

Why do you think Joe Biden doesn't want to forget a student loan debt? I think that it's hard when you have been around through so many different iterations. So he got to Congress in the late 60s, early 70s, when the idea was that if you were rich, you had a right to college and that we had to punish people for going to college.

And that's how the whole student debt thing started to explode. And he is, you know, that's part of like what they saw as being the normal is that you had to earn your place in American society. So that meant taking out a lot of debt and then showing that you have the ability to handle it. You know, then it just became this like catastrophe over the last 25 years. What do you say to people who are like, I don't think it's fair?

I paid my student debt. Why can't you? I say, I'm really sorry that I wasn't able to help you soon enough and that sometimes change takes way too long to happen. But just because we weren't able to help you doesn't mean the next people shouldn't be able to get helped. and that I look forward to all the people that get helped being able to join the fight for other issues. And a lot of times we look at, you know, things like vaccines. Like, you know, you can't just because you got, if you got sick before there was a vaccine, that doesn't mean that there shouldn't now be a vaccine to prevent the next you from getting sick.

It's just, you know, change happens when change happens. And people like me and others are fighting really hard to have change happen as fast as possible. So we help the most amount of people. Can you explain to us just how popular? canceling student loan debt is? Yeah, I mean, it's huge. So right now, there are 46 million Americans who have student loan debt. They are from all ages, from the 17-year-old who's in their first semester in college and finished up high school and Zoom school. So they went to Zoom school right into debt in college to like an 80-year-old grandmother who co-signed on a loan or took out a parent plus loan

to pay for their, you know, their grandchild's education. And so I think for the most part, like all these people know people who have debt or have it themselves or it's impacting marriages, it's impacting, you know, credit to be able to buy a house. Most people have paid on their loans. Some people are in default. Some people are at like, you know, just trying to like do whatever they can to pay what they can. And we've seen it for the last two years, the student loans have been paused because of COVID. And in this time, people have been in the middle of this horrible pandemic, people have been able to exhale for the first time. And so because of alleviating that burden of the student loan debt,

people have been able to, you know, take care of their families. I personally know someone who was able to, like, quit their second job during the worst of the pandemic. She's a preschool teacher, and she bartends on the weekends. And during the worst of the pandemic, she was able to, like, do less second job work because of the pause on the payment. And it just really shows that the government doesn't need to collect these loans. We don't need to tell people that if you're born wealthy, your parents get a tax break, the safer college. And if you're born poor, you get a 6% or high. loan to be able to pay for your college. I mean, that doesn't seem right or just. A lot of people, actually, my husband was like, well, there are Pell Grants and Pell Grants are wonderful. Will you explain why Pell Grants are not the same as, I mean, by the way, he is for forgiving student debt. He's not a total lunatic. But can you explain why Pell Grants are not the same thing? Yeah, so Pell Grants are amazing, but unfortunately, they're not indexed to the true cost of college. And you have to be in a very low-income bracket to get the Pell Grant. So a lot of times you'll have families, I say, in New York City. Two-income family, you might be making 80 grand a year. If you have like two parents that are making

like 40 grand a year, they're just getting by and making bringing an 80-income 80-grand a year. That family wouldn't qualify for a Pell Grant, but at the same time, that family doesn't have discretionary money to save for their kids' college. And so that's the problem is that the Pell Grant program needs to be revamped. Folks are working on that, and that's why we need to have free public college. And we need to revamp the private colleges, since they all get federal funding anyways, to ensure that people can use that. One proposal right now is that we should keep the student loan pause until we get free college. So pause the loan payments until Congress passes free college, because they are, they should, you know, we need to have both. So, but in the meantime,

like, you shouldn't make people suffer with this debt waiting for Congress to get their job done. So just pause, pause till free. Pell grants also, you can only get Pell Grants if you're in United States citizen. Correct. You can only get Pell Grants with your United States citizen. Part of, I believe, part of build back better, hopefully not RIP build back better, is to expand that to be able to include students who are on DACA. You can also get Pell Grants being part of, I think it was the third stimulus last year, fixed it, so you could use Pell Grants again in prisons. So that way people could get their, you know, so the doctor's degree while they're in prison. Seems to me that college should be free if you're in prison because it's good for getting people so they have a

lower recidivism rate. But, you know, whom I'm just, who am I to think about things like that? And Pell Grants will really only cover, like, how much of college does a Pell Grant cover? Like, $7,000. Right. So, and these colleges are like $40,000 or $50,000, right? Yeah, but they're trying to, like, part of the Lubeck batteries to increase the Pell Grant by, like, $500 a year, which, no, I mean, that's like, we, we were yelling in that it's basically, like, it's not even buying a student in a cup of coffee a day. And that's why, we had a plan to get originally free community college was supposed to be and build back better. And then that got the NICS because the private colleges have this lobbying association where the head of it gets paid 700 grand a year to lobby against the college. But it's so crazy because community colleges were originally meant to be free.

Yep, they were. And what happened was in the 1960s, you all might have seen the history books of all these great uprisings for equality on campuses across the country. And then this guy, Barry Goldwater, came around. And these other conservatives like Ronald Reagan got together. And they made the connection that when people are educated, they demand equality and justice. And so they started this big push to cut the state and federal funding of higher education. And then to replace that with loans. So, you know, putting the burden of education on the lower income student that were going to both discourage college and then to punish you once you went. Tell us that Bill Back Better isn't dead.

I'm fighting very hard to get Bill Back Better passed, and I think that these negotiations are painful, horrible, and awful. But at the end of the day, I do think that everyone will figure out a way to get the best possible Billback Better done. And then we get another shot at reconciliation again. Love government by reconciliation because of the filibuster. One of the things I've heard that's a really good argument for giving a student at Tumos is that, Everybody who'd be affected by this are prime people who would then spend that money and make us have a robust economy. Is that correct?

Yes, I definitely recommend that your listeners look up to Stephanie Kelton. She's written a lot about the impact of the economy for canceling the student loan debt. Because the people that have student loan debt, it's not people that are saving money. These aren't people that are like throwing all their money into like stocks and bonds so they're wealthy later. These are people who want to buy a car. they want to have a down payment on the house. They want to be able to get out of a studio apartment. They want to be able to have a cushion to be able to start a business.

And they also want other basic things. Like, you know, if they're at a job where they're being sexually harassed, they want to be able to know that they can go and work at a better job and not have to be stressed each month about having to make a loan payment. It's basically gives people freedom and it gives people the ability to contribute to society. That's really interesting. I think like one of the other things people, like really grab on to with this situation is like not necessarily like the fairness thing

of like why didn't I get this? I get that question all the times. I even know I was anticipated the question. I think what it is is that you have to look at people where they started. So if someone grew up low income and they managed to get through all the barriers to get to college and then they even managed to get through all those barriers to get to law school, should that person not be able to buy a home because they were born poor? So they should should they have to give up all of this income when they're peer in their classroom who was wealthy, they get to keep all of the income they earn. So why do we have this system where based upon your parents' wealth decides how much of your income you get to keep when you have a job and you're doing the work?

Is there anybody who's being a real hero for this cause that we should be supporting more? Yeah, you might have heard of this guy named Chuck Schumer, the majority leader. Unfortunately at this point, I'm feeling. Every other tweet is cancel student debt because He knows that Biden can do it, so it takes it off his plate. Oh, interesting. He's like, this is amazing. So, yeah, Chuck Schumer's been great. Elizabeth Warren's been great. My guy, Bernard Sanders has been great. Over in the House, Ilhan Omar, AOC, you even have like Vincent Casales, on the border has had a version of this. You might have heard of this amazing man, Representative Jim Clyburn. He has a bill out in. We may have heard of him. Yeah. So I mean, that's the thing.

It builds across the spectrum. Like, it started out as like, you know, me and a few lefties. But now, like, we helps make people comfortable with the issue. And now it's like a very mainstream, like everyone's talking about it, which is part of the plan. It's like some, some of us have to be brave and go first to like, we take the heat at first and then everyone else comes along. So if you're listening, Joe Biden, you can do it right now, forgive student debt and make a lot of people very happy. A lot of people in Delaware have student loan debt. His Belarus will love him for it. Yeah. Thank you so much, Melissa. Thank you. I love the work that you all do.

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