#republicans oppose debt forgiveness
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There's been another tranche of student debt forgiveness by the Biden administration.
The Biden administration on Friday announced another $5 billion in debt forgiveness for 74,000 student loan borrowers.
Why it matters: Although the Supreme Court blocked Biden's signature student loan forgiveness plan, his administration has found alternative ways to provide relief to more than 3.7 million people.
The Republican Supreme Court has tried to block student loan relief, but the Biden administration hasn't stopped looking for legal ways around SCOTUS for specific groups of Americans burdened by such debt.
Since 1981 Republicans have serially backed enormous tax breaks for their filthy rich contributors, but they vehemently oppose loan forgiveness for middle class and poorer taxpayers.
House GOP advances bill to block Biden’s student loan repayment program
Supreme Court, Republicans to blame for lack of debt forgiveness, students say in poll
In general, Republicans oppose higher education. Their base is made up of dumbass morons who believe conspiracy theories and they need more voters like that who won't question the bullshit that comes out of the GOP.
The Republican jones for deregulation since the Reagan-Bush era has led student debt to spiral out of control. The vicious circle of more burdensome loans feeding ever-increasing tuition fits well into the GOP agenda. It's a system that discourages post-secondary education for anyone who isn't rich.
President Dwight Eisenhower was no radical. But he knew what made America strong. The highest federal income tax rate for the filthy rich during most of his administration was 91%. And it was universally regarded as a period of enormous economic growth and prosperity.
A portion of that tax revenue went into the National Defense Education Act which, among other features, provided for grants and loans for post-secondary education – particularly for STEM, teacher education, and foreign languages. That was the impressive start of the federal student loan program. It was never meant to be a permanent chain around the necks of college graduates.
National Defense depends on smart Americans. But certain Russia-friendly Republicans have no interest in standing in Putin's way.
#student loans#student debt forgiveness#biden administration#post-secondary education#national defense education act#national defense#dwight eisenhower#high tax rates on the filthy rich#republicans oppose debt forgiveness#house republicans#the gop us supreme court#election 2024
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In light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on student debt forgiveness in Biden v. Nebraska, it seems it might be useful to revisit why American students have so much student debt.
Ironically, it all dates back to Reagan's and the Republicans' decision to cut back on funding for public colleges and universities in order to avoid the possibility of having an "educated proletariat."
So it isn't surprising that is is Republicans who were opposed to any government debt forgiveness for student loans. THEY DON'T WANT TO HAVE EDUCATED CITIZENS. The poorly educated are much easier to manipulate and control.
In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.
Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”
“If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.”
#ronald reagan#public higher education#educated proletariat#roger freeman#student debt#supreme court#student loan forgiveness#biden v nebraska
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Less than a year after the Biden administration proposed forgiving up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers, the Supreme Court ruled the policy unconstitutional. At the core of the case was whether the HEROES Act of 2003 granted the Secretary of Education the authority to “waive or modify” federal student loan terms, up to and including forgiving those loans. The Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that broad forgiveness was beyond the scope of what Congress intended when passing the HEROES Act, further arguing in the majority decision that policies with such a large economic and political impact should be decided through Congress, and not executive action.
In the wake of that decision, the Biden administration has shifted policy toward improving the borrowing process as well as the repayment process. Political attention has focused on repayment (from the Biden administration’s attempts at loan forgiveness to Republican-sponsored legislation proposing new repayment structures) but must also turn to reforming how students decide whether and how much to borrow to ensure future students do not face unmanageable student loan debt.
Short-term policies around loan repayment
With widespread student loan forgiveness struck down by the Supreme Court, the Department of Education (ED) is moving forward on two repayment-oriented efforts. First, the Department has been implementing targeted student loan forgiveness under existing programs. In one recent move, ED announced they had reviewed old income-driven repayment accounts to ensure borrowers received accurate credit for prior monthly payments — as a result about 800,000 borrowers had the rest of their loans forgiven.
The Department is also working to expand student loan forgiveness for students who attended fraudulent universities. In some cases, the administration has automatically forgiven loans for students attending colleges that misrepresented its graduates’ employment rates or that lied about their program accreditation when recruiting prospective students. The administration is also launching a “borrowers defense” application on July 30 where borrowers can make claims against their colleges engaging in misbehavior and request loan forgiveness.
Second, the Biden administration announced the details of their new income-driven repayment plan, with some elements going into effect prior to when student loan repayments restart later this year. The new Saving on a Valuable Education (‘SAVE”) plan will replace REPAYE (an existing income-driven repayment plan) and will automatically transfer borrowers on REPAYE to the new SAVE terms.
The key short-term changes include exempting a higher threshold of income and limiting interest accrual. Borrowers’ monthly payment is calculated off their discretionary income, which has to-date been any income above 150% of the poverty line. Under SAVE, that will be any income above 225% of the poverty line. For a household of four, that means an additional $22,500 of income is protected against consideration when calculating monthly payments. Further, starting this summer if borrowers’ payments don’t cover the interest accrued that month, that interest won’t be charged. Interest accumulation has been a key driver of why some borrowers owe more on their loans four years after graduation than their original balance. While other elements of the plan, such as reducing the years borrowers have to pay before forgiveness, won’t go into effect until next summer, many have argued the new repayment plan is so generous it amounts to a new loan forgiveness program.
Pre-pandemic, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that ED loses 16.9 cents on the dollar for loans in income-driven repayment plans (as opposed to the 12.8 cents on the dollar they gain from loans repaid in standard plans). In its initial review of the Biden administration’s proposed income-driven repayment plan, CBO estimated the program would cost about $230 billion over the next decade, though will update that estimate as the details of the program get finalized.
Challenges restarting payments
Millions of borrowers have had their student loan payments on pause since March 2020, but a provision in recent debt ceiling negotiations stipulated that the pause must end this year and payments will resume this fall. One analysis estimates about 16% of borrowers could be unprepared to make their student loan payment, recommending ED double-down on enrolling borrowers in existing income-driven repayment plans and calls on states and employers to provide assistance navigating loan repayment.
At the federal level, the Biden administration announced that borrowers would not face any negative credit consequence of non-payment until September 30, 2024 during a repayment “on ramp” period. While this action will help borrowers avoid default, it is incumbent on the administration to clearly communicate to borrowers that interest will still accumulate on their loans, so borrowers aren’t surprised by increasing debt balances.
Widespread loan forgiveness: Negotiated rulemaking
The administration has not stopped pursuing widespread student loan forgiveness. But these actions must be taken through the authority granted to the Secretary of Education under the Higher Education Act (HEA). The administration now turns to a long, complicated process called “negotiated rulemaking,” (commonly abbreviated as “neg reg” or “reg neg”) to advance student loan forgiveness.
This Brookings explainer details the negotiated rulemaking process from 2021 when ED convened a committee around student loan forgiveness rulemaking. At a high level, ED must craft a negotiating committee, which will hold hearings and vote on proposed actions, and then ED will propose rules based on committee consensus. These phases can take a long time — but ED is moving quickly and the 2023-24 negotiated rulemaking process is already underway.
There are two key timing considerations for implementation. ED must propose rules by November 1 for them to go into effect by the following July — meaning the Department will likely announce final rules on student loan forgiveness just days before the November 2024 presidential election, raising the stakes on implementation. A new presidential administration could potentially pause implementation and move to formally rescind a federal rule, as former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos did in 2019 when she rescinded a “gainful employment” rule regulating career programs’ eligibility for federal financial aid that had been passed under the Obama administration.
There’s another date to consider — the end of 2025. Most types of student loan forgiveness are subject to taxation, but the American Rescue Plan has a provision that federal student loan discharges are not subject to federal taxation through December 31, 2025 (and most, though not all, states have followed suit). This deadline makes it even more pressing for borrowers that neg-reg rules get submitted by November 2024 so they can be implemented in the second half of 2025 before the tax exemption expires.
Legal challenges ahead?
Federal rulemaking is subject to judicial review, and whatever rules emerge from the current neg-reg process will almost certainly face legal challenge. However, based on the Administrative Procedural Act, those challenges will be unlikely to come until late 2024 once there has been “final agency action” (e.g., when the final rule is posted). Of course, a legal challenge to one rule does not preclude another attempt from an agency. When the Obama administration was crafting gainful employment regulations, their first proposal was struck down, after which they changed the metrics they would use to evaluate colleges and proposed a new rule that was upheld against legal challenges. This may be the first of multiple rulemaking processes around student loan forgiveness and how to best structure loan repayment.
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This should be clear: the coup attempt wasn’t the siege at the capitol. It was the fake electors scheme going on in the swing states. The attack on the capitol was part of it—it was needed to stop or delay the count so that these fake electors could get into place. Fortunately not all republicans are conscienceless. One of the fake electors in Michigan and in Georgia refused to sign their fake elector certificates, and Pence refused to take the fake electors list from Rep Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). Thus the “hang Mike Pence” chants.
Had the coup been successful, new info came out (via Countdown) that Trump would have had Biden executed. Trump isn’t just a traitor, he’s capable of any atrocity you can imagine, so stop thinking “that can’t happen here.” He has said he will put immigrants and his critics in prison—vermin. Where will he draw the line?
Hitler didn’t just put Jews in the camps, he put artists, teachers, philosophers, musicians—anyone who criticized him, or who potentially could—in those camps.
Trump said he never read Mein Kampf, but Steven Miller, his right hand man (his Joseph Goebbels) has. And trump’s late exwife Ivana Trump told her lawyer, among other people, that Trump kept a book containing hitler’s speeches on his bedside table. The friend who gave it to Trump confirmed this.
Look who he admires: Xi, Kim, Orbán and his good buddy, Putin. Trump wants so desperately to be a dictator like his buddies. His last administration had republicans in high positions who were recommended by other republicans. They weren’t Trump people. They often butted heads and opposed trump’s ideas because they weren’t constitutional or because they were brutal or ridiculous or all 3.
If he wins, he will fill those positions with sycophants—Trump yes men—who won’t be qualified for those jobs and more importantly, won’t try to stop him when he does ridiculous, brutal or unconstitutional things…like rounding up brown people (the immigrants he hates aren’t the ones from Europe), critics, opponents , and why stop there? How about teachers, artists, philosophers and musicians? There won’t be anyone in his administration to stop him this time like there were last time.
Go ahead and call me a Cassandra. But it can happen here. On day 1 of trump’s dictatorship, he’ll round up immigrants and put them in camps. He has repeated that several times. Even when Hannity gave Trump an opportunity to downplay his threats, Trump doubled down on them. It can happen here. Register to vote. Vote.
The depths to which Trump will reach have no limits. He’s an evil and insane wannabe dictator. Biden isn’t an ideal president. He’s owned by corporations and special interests like most politicians. But he’s not going to round people up and put them in camps. He doesn’t admire Hitler. The past 4 years haven’t been great at all, but imagine the next 4 years under Trump with no one to stop his cruelty. No one to rein him in. He thinks he’s a king. Thinks he’s immune from prosecution. Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t have another scheme ready for when he loses this election too.
So if you’re planning on not voting because of biden’s stance on the war in Gaza, his inability to forgive student debt, or any of the other legitimate reasons you have for disliking him, I ask you to reconsider. Vote for him and hold his feet to the fire. Protest him until he hears you and changes his mind. He is at least capable of reconsidering his views.
He’s done it before. He wrote the crime bill during the Clinton administration that took a hardline approach to all drugs, including pot. This year he repealed the convictions of everyone who had been convicted of federal marijuana charges. That is literally 180° turn. You can change his mind.
You can’t change Trump’s.
If you read this far, thank you
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"As governors, we support making higher education more affordable and accessible for students in our states, but we fundamentally oppose your plan to force American taxpayers to pay off the student loan debt of an elite few..." the governors said in a letter dated Monday.
The governors, all Republicans, argue that the lowest income Americans will be paying the debts of doctors, lawyers and professors "with the most debt, such as $50,000 or more..."
color me absolutely fucking incensed by this bullshit. everyone—everyone!!!!!—deserves student debt forgiveness, but rich republicans will do anything to twist it so people earning less than $125k a year will remain in debt and therefore remain worker bees. and acting like forgiving $20k, while incredibly helpful, will change as much as they’re claiming is just
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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON
September 26, 2022 (Monday)A headline in the New York Times today read: “Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It’s the 1970s.” The story explained that more money in the hands of consumers thanks to federal stimulus spending, along with a new skepticism of stretched supply lines, has created a rebound in American manufacturing.
Since the 1970s, authors Jim Tankersley, Alan Rappeport, and Ana Swanson explain, outsourcing and automation have meant that every recession has seen factory jobs disappear and never return as employers used downturns to move operations to countries with lower wage levels. This time, though, American manufacturers have not only regained all the jobs lost during the pandemic, they have also added about 67,000 more. Those numbers would be higher if the labor market weren’t so tight, a condition leading employers to offer higher wages and better benefits
.Biden has made it clear that he is trying to overturn 40 years of “supply side” economics, ushered in by President Ronald Reagan. This system was designed to free up capital at the top of the economy through tax cuts and deregulation in the belief that putting capital in the hands of the wealthy—the “supply side”— would lead them to invest more in the economy, thus making it grow more quickly and providing more jobs. While Republicans came to embrace that ideology wholeheartedly, in fact it never showed signs of increasing economic growth. What it did was to move wealth dramatically upward. It also made the measure of the economy the health of Wall Street rather than Main Street.
Since Abraham Lincoln’s administration, which faced a similar economic stratification and a similar justification for it, another approach to the economy has stood against this ideology. Leaders from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Delano Roosevelt have argued that providing opportunity for people at the lower end of the economy—the “demand side”—would drive production and consumption, spreading prosperity upward. Biden has followed in this tradition. Insisting that he would build the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out,” he, along with the Democrats in Congress, bolstered domestic manufacturing with measures like the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Now, statistics show, that investment has paid off. Chad Moutray, the chief economist for the National Association of Manufacturers, told the New York Times reporters: “We have 67,000 more workers today than we had in February 2020. I didn’t think we would get there, to be honest with you.”
National Economic Council director Brian Deese told the reporters, “One of the most striking things that we are seeing now is the number of companies—U.S. companies and global companies—that are committing to build and expand their manufacturing footprint in the United States, and doing so based on their view that not only did the pandemic highlight the need for more resilience in their supply chains, but that the United States is creating a policy environment that makes long-term investment here in the United States more attractive.”Meanwhile, the real net worth of the bottom 50% of U.S. households has climbed 60% since Biden took office, now reaching $67,524.
One of the things that will continue to feed this change is the plan to forgive significant student loan debt, especially among low-income Black and Brown Americans. This story is hitting the news today after the Congressional Budget Office responded to a series of questions posed by Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), both fervently opposed to the program. The CBO’s responses to those specific questions have been widely published, suggesting the program will cost the U.S. $400 billion. This is sparking cries about its expense, but this particular CBO number calculates the cost over the next 30 years rather than the usual ten, does not address the stimulus effects of the relief, and does not take into account how much anyone would actually have repaid. The estimate is, the CBO states in its letter, “highly uncertain.”
In contrast to Biden’s economic program, on Friday the new government of Prime Minister Liz Truss announced the most radical tax cuts in Britain since 1972, cutting the top income tax rate as well as corporate taxes to spur the economy. This unfunded cut will mean borrowing at rising interest rates. Concerns about inflation, already hammering the British economy, made the value of the pound, which is the English unit of currency, drop to its lowest level since 1985.
(MY NOTE: didn't this silly bitch learn ANYTHING from what happened in the US from the false "Trickle down" bullshit? She's another Thatcher!!)
These different economic visions are in conflict here in the United States. Former Trump economic advisor Steve Moore reacted to the Truss tax cuts by saying: “This is exactly what we should be doing in the US." White House economic advisor Jared Bernstein said: "President Biden has been very clear about the negative track record of trickle-down, Reagan-style tax cuts."
Republicans have managed to keep voters behind their economic program by downplaying it and emphasizing cultural issues, primarily abortion, which reliably turned out anti-abortion voters. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion, Republicans have a demographic problem: a majority of voters support reproductive rights and are turning out to vote, and there is no longer a reason for anti-abortion voters to show up.
So Republican leaders are downplaying abortion: reporter Eric Garcia noted today that Republican representative and Senate candidate Ted Budd (R-NC), who is a cosponsor of the House version of Senator Lindsey Graham’s (R-SC) national abortion bill, didn’t mention his stance in a recent rally with former president Trump. They are also inventing new cultural crises, most notably an attack on LGBTQIA folks but also a renewed attack on immigrants.
Trump has gone further, jumping aboard the QAnon train, which the FBI considers a domestic terrorism threat, as his own legal troubles are mounting. His lawyers failed to slow down the criminal investigation into his theft of documents, including many marked with the highest levels of classification. New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Trump, his company, and his children and two associates for fraud. And now the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol is beginning to turn up more information.
On Friday the committee subpoenaed Wisconsin House Speaker Robin Vos to ask about a phone call he had with Trump in July 2022 (not a typo) in which Trump tried to get him to change the 2020 result in Wisconsin. Vos is challenging the subpoena.
In the lead-up to Wednesday’s midday public hearing of the committee, Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that election denier Phil Waldron, a former Army colonel associated with Trump loyalist Michael Flynn, was in contact with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in late December 2020 about gaining access to the voting systems in Arizona and Georgia. Waldron referred to Arizona as “our lead domino we were counting on to start the cascade,” to overturn the election.
Meanwhile, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, was texting QAnon links to Meadows. And now, after flirting with QAnon since 2020, Trump has embraced it wholeheartedly, first “retruthing” social media posts featuring him as a QAnon hero and warning that “The Storm Is Coming,” then using QAnon music at a rally. Now, he has sent out an email calling for the death penalty for drug dealers—a favorite theme of fascists since the 1930s and a major part of the program of former dictator Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whom Trump admires—along with the warning that “Under Democrat control, the streets of our great cities are drenched in the blood of innocent victims,” tapping into the QAnon themes of violent retribution for those they see as preying on America’s youth.
“I certainly will do whatever it takes to make sure Donald Trump isn't anywhere close to the Oval Office,” Representative Liz Cheney said this weekend at The Texas Tribune Festival, which highlights politics and policy. “And if he is the nominee, I won't be a Republican.” She warned that a Republican majority in the House would empower Trump Republicans like Jim Jordan (OH), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), and Lauren Boebert (CO).
And when asked if Trump should testify before the committee, Cheney answered: “Any interaction that Donald Trump has with the committee will be under oath and subject to penalty of perjury.
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Just Get Used To It You Little 'Semi-Fascists' Pigs
One would think the Democrats might have learned from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 mistake and avoided insulting half the voters they’re supposed to win over as stupid, undemocratic buffoons. But that would require them to first stop thinking of half the electorate as morons who have a soft spot for totalitarianism — which is, apparently, too much to ask.
The guy who promised to restore civility and decency and normalcy to the Oval Office wants you to know you’re a “semi-fascist” if you voted for DJT instead of him. It’s not clear whether Biden actually knows what fascism is since, these days, he can’t be relied upon to know whose hand he shook (if there is even really someone there to shake it) within a two-minute time frame.
When asked to explain what Biden meant by “semi-fascism,” White House press secretary Karen Jong-Perrier went a step further and attributed the label to the entire Republican Party.
There’s no question both sides of the political aisle are drawn to hyperbole and exaggerations, but this is ridiculous. Though fascism itself is a term that has been debated since the 1920's, it is easy to say what fascism is not:
It is not an ideology that advocates robust free speech and religious rights for all people, which conservatism does. It is not a political party that supports giving voters the power to decide abortion restrictions in their states, which the GOP does. It is not a movement that opposes draconian uses of federal power, such as sweeping COVID-19 vaccine mandates and costly student loan debt forgiveness, which conservatism does. And it is definitely not a political party that protests the weaponization of key institutions like Big Tech and the FBI against political dissidents, which the Republican Party does.
As George Orwell put it, “the word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” For Democrats, fascism simply means anything they don’t like, and anything that might possibly threaten their control over the governing establishment.
View this and other great posts at https://www.diogenesmiddlefinger.com/
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The week before, somebody slipped this little gem into Maria Cantwell’s must-pass legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) (my inquiry to her press office was never answered):“The Secretary, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Attorney General may not take any action to cancel or forgive the outstanding balances, or portion of balances, on any Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, or otherwise modify the terms or conditions of a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford Loan, made to an eligible student, except as authorized by an Act of Congress.”
The real reason Republicans oppose efforts to cancel student debt - Raw Story
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It's a Presidential election year and we, once again, are arguing endlessly about whether or not Biden is doing enough Progressivism to warrant being voted for. And what really, really annoys the piss out of me is that the discourse is always focused on the President.
Let's just say for a moment that we could wave a magic wand and elect a genuine socialist candidate. Would they be able to institute a single payer system? Forgive student loan debt? Institute UBI? Fix our broken immigration system? Restore Roe? Do all the things that would make America much more friendly to human life?
No, they would not.
Because basically all of those things would require, if absolutely nothing else, appropriations from congress. And the Republicans maintain slim leads in both houses of congress, not enough to ram their agenda through but more than enough to hamstring anyone's agenda. They have, also, pretty openly opposed Biden on policies that move things in the nightmare direction they want things to go (I think specifically of immigration) because supporting it would be seen as political loss. Give them an agenda anathema to their philosophy of governance (in as much as they even have one) and that's the easiest "nay" they've ever cast.
At some point in the last seventy years or so, seemingly everybody got on board with the unitary executive theory to some degree and we've let congress more-or-less off the hook for choosing to do the bare minimum. The American Right Wing is considerably worse about it (how many times did they repeal the ACA when they knew it would get vetoed vs. when they could actually achieve something), but The Democrats aren't sinless. Republicans don't want to make hard choices, Democrats are way too willing to kill their darlings.
So at some point, we got really OK with congress doing the bare minimum and the President (and, to some extent, the courts) working around it. And now we get mad at those branches of government when they actually follow the law and beg congress to do their damn job! But as we saw with Donald Trump's presidency, working around congress with executive and judicial authority cannot work forever. It took four years to undo years of workarounds and the people who undid them desperately want to go further.
Nothing will ever improve long term if we don't demand and create a congress that actually does its fucking job. And re-electing a man who successfully undid decades of of social progress in only four years will not help us achieve that goal.
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Senate Republicans Oppose Biden's Latest Student Loan Forgiveness Plan
Senate Republicans are once again challenging President Biden's efforts to pursue student loan forgiveness, arguing that it transfers the burden to those who did not take out loans or have already paid off their debts.
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Forgiveness for me, but not for thee.
July 6, 2023
As usual whenever they see cruelty inflicted upon a group of Americans to which they don't belong, Republicans are positively giddy over the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting President Biden's plan to forgive government-financed student loans. In a case brought by a clutch of red states with dubious legal standing, the six corrupt hacks on the Court arbitrarily ruled that Biden lacked the authority to expunge the repayment of loans owed by around 43 million individuals and totaling some $430 billion in debt principal.
Compare this to the nearly $800 billion in Paycheck Protection Program loans the federal government doled out over the last three years of which 92% (over $700 billion) were granted full or partial forgiveness, according to the Small Business Administration. While initially intended to shore up small businesses that suffered during the COVID pandemic, millions went instead to companies owned by wealthy celebrities, including Tom Brady and Khloe Kardashian, as well as more than $120 million to companies that actually prospered during COVID.
Grifting Republican congress members also grabbed a slice of the PPP pie and had their loans forgiven. Most are the same hypocrites who expressed outrage that Gen Xers, Millennials and Zoomers would not be saddled with crushing debt for years to come. And are now delighted that they still will be. Let's look at some examples.
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), who called President Biden's student loan forgiveness program a "giveaway," had his own $947,100 PPP loan forgiven.
Rep. Kevin Hern (R-OK) called the SCOTUS decision "awesome news." He had a $1.07 million PPP erased.
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) harrumphed that taxpayers "should not be forced to pay the bills of the 13% of Americans with student loan debt." His $2.7 million PPP loan got entirely wiped off the books.
Other GOP members of Congress who enjoyed substantial PPP loan forgiveness include Ralph Norman ($306,520), Vicki Hartzler ($451,200), Matt Gaetz ($476,000), Lori Chavez-DeRemer ($1.3 million), Roger Williams ($1.43 million), Carol Miller ($3.1 million) and Brett Guthrie (and eye-popping $4.3 million). Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona added two more.
Markwayne Mullin had more than $1.4 million in pandemic loans forgiven. He represents 489,000 eligible [student] borrowers that were turned down today. Marjorie Taylor Greene had more than $180,000 forgiven. She represents 91,800 eligible borrowers who were turned down today.
Republican politicians are fiercely opposed to transforming government loans into grants for ordinary citizens. But they're just fine with businesses doing it. As long as they can get in on the action, too.
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5 Takeaways from Debt Limit
5/31/23
With the House about to vote on increasing the US debt limit, the Washington Post has listed and discussed five main takeaways from the proposed deal – click here to read the Post’s article. In summary -
The plan will do very little to balance the budget. The agreement would cut spending by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. The nondefense spending category targeted for cuts by Republicans includes funding for education, national parks, and scientific research. Republicans specifically excluded the bloated Defense budget from cuts - even though the US Defense budget is greater than the combined budgets of the next 9 nations!
Incomes are likely to take a hit as student loans payments resume in September. About 43 million indebted Americans will have their disposal income cut by a total of about $40 billion annually. Republicans have consistently opposed Biden’s efforts to forgive these loans.
Families that receive food aid could feel the pinch, amid rising prices. The debt ceiling cuts nutrition programs, including the already underfunded TANF, SNAP and WiC programs, while adding work requirements. History has shown the cost of administering work far outweighs any benefits.
The rock-solid Jobs market is likely to soften a little. A slowdown in Federal spending would trickle down to business and families, leading to the loss of about 150,000 jobs by the end of next year. Who wants that?
Overall, the plan won’t be a big drag on the economy. Although it is estimated spend caps could drag down economic growth by a “modest” 0.3 percent next year, in our nearly 28 trillion economy it totals about $80 billion in reduced government spending for our poorest and most needy citizens, while also slightly worsening our debt to GDP ratio.
Thanks for nothing, Republicans. You continue to prove stupid is as stupid does. You all deserve to be voted out of office at every level of federal, state, and local government.
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House Passes $1.5 Trillion Bill
By Noreen Karam, University of Virginia Tech, Class of 2024
April 27, 2023
House Republicans narrowly passed legislation Wednesday pairing nearly $4.8 trillion in deficit reduction measures with a debt limit increase into next year — a move they argue should force Democrats to finally negotiate conditions for raising the nation’s borrowing limit.
The 222-member House GOP conference largely unified around the bill after weeks of tense negotiations, including last-minute changes leadership reluctantly agreed to include in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
Dozens of Republicans who supported the bill were casting their first ever votes for a debt limit increase. “For the first time we have a bill serious about controlling the reckless spending that’s destroying America’s productivity and its prosperity,” Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., who has opposed debt limit increases for 15 years, said on the floor. Ultimately, four Republicans — Tennessee's Tim Burchett, Florida's Matt Gaetz, Colorado's Ken Buck and Arizona's Andy Biggs — voted against the bill, the maximum number of defections GOP leaders could afford. The 217-215 vote was otherwise along party lines.
Burchett said the measure did not include enough “real deficit reduction.” Biggs agreed, saying in a statement that the measure only lowers the projected gross national debt a decade from now from $52 trillion to $47 trillion. Gaetz cited a similar figure, saying in a statement that "gaslighting nearly $50 trillion in debt to America is something my conscious cannot abide at this time.” Buck explained his vote was for the same reasons. But a full-court press from Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other GOP leaders won over others who'd been leaning against the measure, such as Nacy Mace of South Carolina.
Mace said after a Wednesday afternoon meeting with McCarthy that she'd back the bill after the speaker promised to work with her on future efforts to balance the federal budget, including a possible balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution.
Key components of the measure include:
· Raising the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or extending it through March 2024, whichever comes first.
· Cutting and capping discretionary spending for the next decade, starting with a $1.47 trillion topline in fiscal 2024 and allowing for 1 percent annual growth over the following nine years. The first-year cap reflects a $131 billion cut from current funding levels, which spending wouldn’t catch up to until the end of the decade under the proposal.
· Repealing most of the energy tax credit provisions from Democrats’ 2022 climate, tax and health law, with the exception of some biofuel provisions Midwestern Republicans pushed to protect.
· Rescinding unobligated IRS tax enforcement and climate-related grant funds from the 2022 law and unspent COVID-19 relief from various pandemic-era aid packages.
· Canceling President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
· Expanding existing work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and instituting new rules for Medicaid beneficiaries.
· Overhauling infrastructure permitting and other energy-related laws and regulations to spur more domestic production, primarily for fossil fuels.
· Requiring congressional authorization for major administration regulatory initiatives.
Republicans said the measure reflects the shared priorities of various ideological factions in the conference and serves as their opening offer to President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats, who want a clean debt limit increase. “The whole purpose of this is to compel the president to negotiate — and to demonstrate to Washington, D.C., that Kevin McCarthy has the votes to raise the debt ceiling,” Rep. French Hill, R-Ark., said.
House Democrats all voted against the bill, arguing that Congress should raise the debt limit without conditions. They also slammed the spending cuts in the bill, saying they would have a massive impact on government programs Americans depend on, from health care and nutrition services to education and infrastructure. “There is no way Congress will agree to 10 years of destructive caps and the biggest single cut to nondefense programs in American history," House Budget ranking member Brendan F. Boyle, D-Pa., said during debate. The debt limit “x date” — when the Treasury Department is at risk of running out of cash and wiggle room under the borrowing cap to pay bondholders and other obligations — will hit as early as June. The exact timing will depend in large part on tax receipts the Treasury is still analyzing, but the department plans to release an updated forecast later this week or next.
The Senate is planning to ignore House Republicans’ bill but will be under pressure to either negotiate or act on an alternative plan. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer no indication Wednesday that the House vote would change his negotiating posture. “We think what Speaker McCarthy and the House have done is going to bring us closer to default, not further away from it,” the New York Democrat said.
Senate Democrats have demanded a clean debt limit bill, but Schumer declined to say whether he planned to bring one to the floor. “Our plan has always been the same: to avoid default, pass a clean debt ceiling — no brinksmanship, no hostage-taking,” he said. Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith said Schumer’s position isn’t tenable. “They have to get off that because he can't even get his own Democrats to vote for it … and they’ve got to have 60 votes over there,” the Missouri Republican said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his conference are backing McCarthy's insistence on spending cuts for raising the debt limit. “Until [Biden] and the speaker of the House reach an agreement, we’ll be at a standoff,” McConnell said. Biden has threatened to veto the GOP bill and continues to insist on a clean debt limit increase. The president has repeatedly said he would meet with McCarthy again only when House Republicans produce a budget. But on Wednesday ahead of the vote, the only condition Biden gave for meeting with the speaker is that raising the debt limit remains “not negotiable."
The White House had previously signaled Republicans’ debt limit bill wouldn’t suffice as a plan to kick-start spending negotiations but on Wednesday issued a statement on the measure that characterized it as a budget. “House Republicans are selling out hard-working Americans in order to defend their top priority: restoring the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest and corporations at a cost of over $3 trillion,” White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt said. “Budgets are a statement of values — and House Republicans have made clear who they are fighting for.” Republicans do not extend any of the 2017 tax cuts in their debt limit bill and have not yet made that a request in negotiations, despite the White House repeatedly trying to make that connection.
It’s unclear if the White House intentionally referred to Republicans' debt limit bill as a budget to allow Biden to open the door to negotiations or not, but some congressional Democrats are predicting he’ll ultimately get there. “I think he will sit down, probably,” Rep. Henry Cuellar said. However, the Texas Democrat said the Senate would “not necessarily” be pressured into doing anything, noting that “the Senate is the Senate.”
Maryland Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the former No. 2 House Democrat who stepped down from leadership at the beginning of the year, said negotiations are inevitable since the parties will need to compromise to avoid a crisis. “I'm sure there are going to be some negotiations because we don't believe that default is an option either. Both sides agree on something,” he said.
But if Republicans expect Democrats to cut a deal, they need to offer something that will appeal to their party, Hoyer said. “We would want to have rational numbers,” he said, referring to discretionary spending levels. “And right now we're not even close to rational numbers.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/04/26/us/debt-ceiling-vote-news
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/26/house-gop-debt-limit-debate/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-gop-narrowly-passes-bill-raise-debt-ceiling/story?id=98881337
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/house-republicans-debt-ceiling-bill-vote/
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One hundred and twenty-eight House Republicans and nearly all Republican senators on Friday filed amicus briefs with the Supreme Court opposing the Biden administration's federal student debt cancellation plan, which has been halted as tens of millions of Americans await the justices' ruling on its legality
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