If it's one thing the Progressives know about human nature it's that once the government "gives" a benefit, it can't be taken away without a battle. The longer they drag this unfair repayment deal out, the harder it will be to stop it.
Biden extends pause on federal student loan repayments after progressive backlash - TheBlaze
It was one of his first acts, and there are 41 million Americans who have loans to repay. Needs to hang on for the 2022 election.
Joseph P. Kennedy III is the 22nd wealthiest member of Congress ($18.6 million). His wife Lauren Anne Birchfield also has some college debt. Her student loans remain (she’s in the hole some $50,000 to the federal government, Harvard and a Des Moines-based educational outfit). Really? I have nothing against the rich dynasty Massachusetts Democrats continue to send to Congress, but with all those trust funds, couldn't they pay us back for college? Roll Call. http://media.cq.com/50Richest/#
The main source of the Kennedy family wealth was amassed by his namesake in banking, real estate, liquor, films and Wall Street holdings. In 1998, the Kennedy family sold Chicago’s Merchandise Mart for $625 million, which the family patriarch had purchased in 1945 for $12.6 million. The deal allowed Kennedy heirs to receive a stake in one of the nation’s largest real estate investment trusts, according to the Associated Press.
Kennedy, who represents the 4th Congressional district, reported most of his assets are held in family trusts. The 2014 range - $18.7 million to $64.5 million – is higher than the $15.6 million to $55.8 million range he reported as a candidate in 2012. His latest report also includes mortgage debt of between $750,000 and $1.5 million on homes in Brookline and Washington, D.C., and student loans – owed by his wife Lauren Birchfield – of between $40,000 and $115,000.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20150616/NEWS/150617085
General Eric Holder's Department of Justice has used its "Operation Choke Point" to manipulate banks and third-party payment processors to drop whole categories of businesses the Obama administration disfavors, such as online arms and ammunition sellers, tobacconists, and payday lenders. Left-wing nonprofit allies of the Administration like the Center for Responsible Lending and Americans for Financial Reform have provided media support.
“This is not law enforcement. It is intimidation backed up by the might of the government.” http://capitalresearch.org/2015/03/operation-choke-point/
Manipulating lending institutions to achieve social ends. Who would have thought? Isn’t that how we got the housing bubble and bust beginning with the Community Reinvestment Act in the 1970s and ending in the Great Recession of 2008? (Actually, it isn’t over; you can still get zero down home loans).
And isn’t that how we’re accumulating mounting college loan debt—to achieve social ends by paying universities through the back door while unprepared students enter through the front? Sallie Mae is like Freddie Mac. Equal opportunity.
http://dailysignal.com/2015/03/02/newt-gingrich-choke-point-beginning-real-tyranny-united-states/
http://spectator.org/articles/42211/true-origins-financial-crisis#!
http://www.inc.com/mark-cuban/video-student-loans-bubble.html
I checked Payday Loans against the government loans to students. Who's the real culprit. Got it--the federal government is the bigger loan shark.
"The $41.3 billion profit [from gov't student loans] for the 2013 fiscal year is down $3.6 billion from the previous year but it's a higher profit level than all but two companies in the world: Exxon Mobil cleared $44.9 billion in 2012, and Apple cleared $41.7 billion." (USAToday Nov. 25, 2013)
"The easy-to-get small ...[payday] loans have drawn a lot of criticism in recent years for burdening low-income borrowers with astronomically high interest rates and fees. In states with no restrictions on the loans, borrowers who quickly replace one payday loan with another generate $2.6 billion in fees every year. ( Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2013)
"Payday loan borrowers spend approximately $7.4 billion annually at 20,000 storefronts and hundreds of websites, plus additional sums at a growing number of banks." (Pew Report, July, 2012)
Story at Huffington Post, May 14, 2013
“The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation's most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.
Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation's most profitable company, reported $44.9 billion in net income last year. Apple Inc. recorded a $41.7 billion profit in its 2012 fiscal year, which ended in September, while Chevron Corp. reported $26.2 billion in earnings last year. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reported a combined $51.9 billion in profit last year.”
An article in today’s WSJ reports the average student graduates with $30,000 indebtedness. I'm surprised the debt is "only" $30,000. I got married before I finished college, so I had to "borrow" my senior year's tuition from my dad and pay it back, which I did. He was sort of old fashioned and figured once married I was a responsible adult, possibly my husband’s responsibility. Costs at a state university were about $1000/year, so let's say it was $4000 for 4 years in 1961. That's $31,250 in 2013 for inflation.
So why were so many people graduating then without debt? No student loans or grants, and very few scholarships would be my guess. The more money available, the higher the tuition and fees charged by academe.
1958 Father’s Day, University of Illinois at McKinley Hall (I still have that dress in my “archives.”)
"On December 23, 2011, President Obama signed into law the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-74). This new federal law states that the amount of Federal Pell Grant funds a student may receive over his or her LIFETIME will be reduced to the duration of a student's eligibility from 18 semesters (or its equivalent) to 12 semesters (or its equivalent). This new law applies to ALL Federal Pell Grant eligible students effective with the 2012-2013 award year beginning July 1, 2012. (DCL-GEN-12-01)"
The cut in grant eligibility has serious ramifications for non-traditional students. Part-time students who do not receive a full semester grant may lose out on funds if they do not earn an undergraduate degree within 12 semesters. Adults who go back to school, including retraining for a new career, will also have limited access to grants.
The amount of the grant varies based on family income (with a current yearly maximum grant of $5,550). If a student gets a grant less than a maximum, and a year later finds their income level has been reduced, they will not be able to recoup the difference in the lower amounts earned in a previous year. The cut in eligible semesters makes it difficult for students to make up that gap in later years.
http://www.examiner.com/article/college-students-learn-of-obama-s-secret-pell-grant-cuts
The money for the Dream Act (DACA) has to come from some place, so why not from native born students?
The student loan bubble will be the next housing bubble, and I haven't heard much about it during this campaign. It's being kicked down the road for the next administration--perhaps Romney will get the blame instead of Bush (if Obama is reelected, we know Bush will be blamed). But according to an article in today’s New York Times it seems the new changes in student debt relief will benefit the wealthy, not the poor.
Surprise! Where would jobs for liberals come from it they didn't create a permanent low-income class?
“. . . the changes introduced by the Obama administration could allow a graduate making $70,000 a year to reduce monthly payments to $448 a month and “have over $100,000 of debt forgiven, . . . If you are low-income, it doesn’t really give you a big bang,” said Jason Delisle, one of the authors of the study, which estimates that monthly payments for low-income borrowers would drop to $20, from $25, under the changes. “If you are high-income and have a lot of debt, this is a huge giveaway.”
One could get whip lash reading about senior citizens and college loans. Is is a good idea or not?
In August 2010, this article appeared in USAToday. "There are more opportunities than in the past for senior citizens to take college classes and get help paying for them," says financial aid expert Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com.
Many community colleges and some four-year colleges allow seniors to audit classes for free and significantly reduce tuition for those who take them for credit. The financial arrangements vary widely by school and so do the age requirements — generally 60, 62, or 65 and over.”
Yes, in 2010, before the news about the next bubble burst, people were being encouraged to borrow money for college. But in today’s USAToday, Washington Post and other sources buying the boilerplate from the NY Federal Reserve research, there’s a different story, although much overblown, since the small print says 5.8% of the college loan debt is for seniors, and 10% are in arrears. That’s a pretty small portion of college debt.
“New research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that Americans 60 and older still owe about $36 billion in student loans, providing a rare window into the dynamics of student debt. More than 10 percent of those loans are delinquent. As a result, consumer advocates say, it is not uncommon for Social Security checks to be garnished or for debt collectors to harass borrowers in their 80s over student loans that are decades old.
The fact that even seniors remain saddled with student loans highlights what a growing chorus of lawmakers, economists and financial experts say has become a central conflict in the nation's higher education system: The long-touted benefits of a college degree are being diluted by rising tuition rates and the longevity of debt.”
Think Progress, a leftist bloggity news/opinion site, uses the phrase “crushing America’s Senior citizens.” Anything to avoid talking about what a bad job this administration has done with the economy, and to suck more people into a mentality of victimhood to be saved by BO. Obama is taking credit for an economy that could have rebounded in spite of the him, faster and healthier, by dragging us further trillions into debt.
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