I had to take out student loans for law school and to finish up at Hendrix. My father died a week before Christmas during my senior year. My brother Dave was a year behind me in college at the time and Mother had 2 more in the home. Buck had life and mortgage insurance so she didn’t have to return to the workforce immediately. But she couldn’t pay the horse-choking tuition bill for law school.
So, I took out loans from the Guaranteed Student Loan Program and the Methodist Student Scholarship and Loan program. And so three years later off I went into the world of work with $30,000 or so on my back. Which was a not insignificant amount of money in 1981. But you know what? I paid them all back. True, I got some help along the way. I did work study at Hendrix and at Tulane. The law firm I clerked for back home sent me stuff to research from time to time. Mother paid the rent for the flophouse I lived in. And since I was a Legal Services type in my first job, I was allowed to pay interest only for a year. Which really came in handy.
Anyway, I paid them all off. Every penny. But those payments, taken off the top as stuff like the rent and the car note that had to be paid first kept me out of the housing market when I moved back to Little Rock. In retrospect, that wasn’t such bad thing. I distinctly recall my friends that were first time home owners back then bragging about locking in at 15% which is damn near a loan shark rate given the present market. And I came out with a good credit rating especially when you consider the default rate on student loans even back then. That was never an option for me as I spent the bulk of my career as a debt collection lawyer for a Federal agency. That sort of fiscal indiscretion would not have been looked upon favorably during my annual Ethics in Government.
Besides, if I stiffed the Methodists I would go to Hell. Which, depending on who you’re talking to, and what Bible he or she reads, observes no statute of limitations for payback.
And so the question that has been put to me is whether I resent the fact that certain folks will be eligible for up to $20,000 in student loan debt forgiveness under President Biden’s proposal. My answer is simple.
No.
I figured the government eventually would have to do something along these lines. Last time I looked there was a trillion dollars of student debt floating around out there. If you think anywhere near that is going to be repaid you are nuts.
Sure, I would have liked to have my debt written off. But I didn’t. And that issue is water way far under the bridge at this stage. So I don’t resent it a bit.
But boy, some of our politicians, sure want me to. Like the always-good-for-a-laugh Congresswoman from Georgia Marjorie Taylor Green who said, and I quote, “For our government to say “OK, well your debt is completely forgiven’ it’s completely forgiven’ is completely unfair.”
First of all if a particular student’s debt is under $20,000 then, yeah, it would be completely forgiven. They are still on the hook for any balance over that. Secondly, she has got a lot of nerve to pop off about this proposal seeing as how her PPP loans were forgiven to the tune of $188,504. And her Sovereign Liege, the sticky fingered collector of documents he should not have in his possession, has sent entities he had interests in to Bankruptcy Court 6 times. Further, he has a well deserved reputation for stiffing people on top of that. It is hoped, for their sake, that the armada of lawyers he has toiling on his behalf in multiple venues got it up front.
Facts are troublesome things, Marge.
Look. To make a morality play out of a commercial transaction-albeit a crazy commercial transaction-is just plain stupid. Subsumed in every contract is the right to breach. The question remaining is what are the consequences that flow from that breach. Not whether the debtor goes to Methodist or Baptist Hell for doing so or gets locked up.
Neither is it immoral or unfair to those that are current on their payments for the government to write off debt. It does it every day. I know. I approved it in certain cases if the facts warranted it. Just as somebody at the Treasury wrote off Congressman Taylor’s debt. She obviously qualified under the rules of the program and took advantage of it. Am I supposed to resent that too?
Actually, my biggest problem with the recent proposals by the administration is that it didn’t address what I perceive to the two biggest problems in the Student Loan program off the top of my head from whence most of my notions originate.
1) A student loan debt is the only one that I am aware of that cannot be negotiated down or Discharged in Bankruptcy. Well, you can get a Discharge if you can prove “undue hardship’ which Congress has yet to define or that you are dead, which has a generally agreed upon definition.
2) There are too many lousy post-secondary institutions of “education” that convey completely worthless degrees to those that actually fulfill the course of study at these diploma mills. I’m talking primarily about “for profit” schools that primarily exist on the Internet to sponge off the Student Loan Program and VA student loans. The government needs to either kick them off the program or tighten up the eligibility rates based on retention and job acquisition. And, to be fair, I can think of think of a couple of “traditional” State schools here in Arkansas that would literally cease to exist but for the various student loan programs out there.
I suppose I could go on and on about higher education in this country but I’ve made my main point.
Again, do I resent the fact that current student loan debtors are getting a writeoff and I didn’t?
Of course not. I could not have gone to school without taking on student loan debt. I paid the damn things back. I’ve had a nice career during which I paid back in taxes exponentially more than the loans I took out It all worked out pretty good for me.
What’s there to resent?
