People are still going to bitch about this administration not doing enough for student debt relief, and that’s understandable considering how long it’s been a problem and how little effort has gone into fixing it up until now. But just remember which party is trying to do something about it now and which party built the current SCOTUS that has blocked those efforts so far. Democrats’ track record is far from admirable, but the GOP is flat out telling you to your face that you will get nothing you want or need and you will like it when they are in power.
Besides that, consider that Republican policy in general is about obstruction, regressive judicial interpretation, and brazen inaction on social issues. As such it is possible for Republicans to achieve a lot of their agenda by just holding one branch of Congress or having just the Presidency and courts without Congress. Because they achieve most of what they want via state legislatures suing to get their activist judges to rewrite the law through legal precedent. Contrastingly Democratic policy is often about taking action to address things which requires both Houses of Congress and the Presidency to have a chance at success, particularly with the current courts making litigation as remedy a non-starter for them.
Knowing that, look at the makeup of our federal government over the last 30 or so years. You will see that Democrats had about 3 months of true supermajority under Obama (72 working days to be exact) and the rest of that term with a strong majority, and then two years of a split Senate for Biden’s first term with DINO Manchin and turncoat Sinema being part of that Democratic split. So we, the voters, have given Democrats two years out of the last 30 to actually have a chance to install an agenda. Just two. And those two years ended over 12 years ago.
If you want student loan forgiveness along with other things like abortion protections, voting rights protections, climate change action, and so on, you’re not going to get it overnight with Democrats. It’s going to be an uphill battle, it’s going to take participation in primaries to get DINOsaurs replaced with younger progressives who actually have a stake in these things, and it’s probably going to take a few consecutive cycles of sustained federal control. You will not get easy and satisfying victories with just one or two votes. But I can absolutely 100% guarantee you that for every second you let Republicans control even a single branch of government, even just one chamber of Congress, you will get NOTHING on any of those topics and in fact, those situations will be made actively and maliciously worse out of pure spite. And the following Democratic administration will be that much more behind the curve and it will require that much more time and effort just to get back to zero and to even begin addressing those issues in a meaningful way.
My friends from HS and I are all still very close and hang out a few times a year. For the most part we are all doing quite well career and financial wise. The exception is my good friend who studied to be a music teacher. He is brilliant and hard working, but has had to hustle twice as hard as I have for half as much.
For 20 yrs he has been paying on his loans for undergrad and a masters degree. He has had to take jobs in every corner of the country to try and get established. I saw him a few weeks ago and he announced that thanks to Uncle Joe, he was now student debt free.
My wife and I might grumble a little when we start writing checks again in a few months but I feel a lot better knowing that more support is going out to those who truly need it.
