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Oct. 20, 2022 - Epoch Times
13:16
4 Million Students Lose Access to Biden’s Loan Forgiveness Program: Massive Scale Back
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Good evening, and right before we dive in, I would like to quickly mention that if you happen to have an Instagram account, well, consider following me at Epic Times Roman.
I usually publish my early research on there, I do live streams over there, I publish spicy memes, short reels, and I post behind the scenes not only for this program, but also for my interviews as well.
And so, if you'd like to follow me, the handle is Epic Times Roman.
And I will continue to publish on Instagram as long as Mark Zuckerberg and his censorship regime, well, until they force me to stop.
Regardless, now let's dive into today's main topic.
Because it looks like election season is indeed upon us.
Evidenced by the fact that despite record inflation, Joe Biden signed an executive order which will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to wipe out student loan debt for millions of Americans.
However, very quietly and without much fanfare, the Biden administration has actually been slowly making reversals to their student loan forgiveness program and scaling back the eligibility requirements.
Meaning that those who initially thought they qualified actually no longer do.
Specifically, what happened was that back in August of this year, Joe Biden made the announcement that his administration will spend hundreds of billions of dollars to pay off certain types of student loan debt.
Within that initial announcement, it was stated that people who earn less than $125,000 a year Furthermore, within that same announcement, it was stated that if a person had previously qualified for a Pell Grant, and then he or she also meets those income requirements, well, then those individuals can actually eliminate $20,000 worth of their student loan debt.
That was what was initially announced, at least.
However, what wound up happening was that lawsuits began to be brought forth across the entire country, accusing the administration of not having the legal authority to take this particular action, meaning that what they were doing was illegal.
For instance, on September the 29th, which is about a month after the initial student loan debt forgiveness program was announced, well, six different states filed a joint lawsuit against both Joe Biden as well as the Secretary of Education, stating that their move to cancel student loan debt was actually illegal.
For your reference, those six states are Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, as well as South Carolina.
And within this lawsuit, these six states were arguing that the Biden administration's legal foundation for that move just doesn't hold any water.
Specifically, in order to justify having the power to eliminate the student loan debt, the Department of Education made the claim that the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, otherwise known as the HEROES Act, gave them the authority to cancel so much student loan debt because of the COVID crisis.
Basically, just for your general reference, that specific law, the HEROES Act, well, it enables the Secretary of Education to quote, And therefore, citing that particular law, the Biden administration used the fact that there is a COVID pandemic national emergency to justify their student loan forgiveness plan, which just as an aside, might actually help to explain why
just a few days ago, Joe Biden extended the COVID national emergency, despite saying earlier that the pandemic was over.
Regardless though, Within this lawsuit, the states were arguing that using the HEROES Act to cancel the student loan debt was an absurd interpretation of that particular law.
Here is exactly what the plaintiffs stated in their lawsuit.
Quote, in addition to being economically unwise and downright unfair, the Biden administration's mass debt cancellation is yet another example in a long line of unlawful regulatory actions.
No statute permits President Biden to unilaterally relieve millions of individuals from their obligation to pay loans they voluntarily assumed.
Determined to pursue across-the-board debt cancellation and stymied by repeated failures to achieve that goal through legislation, the administration resorted to a federal law whose purpose is to provide relief to individuals who have suffered from an emergency like the 9-11 terrorist attacks or who must serve their country overseas in the military.
That law, known as the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, otherwise known as the HEROES Act, have previously been used by the Department of Education to relieve active-duty personnel from nettlesome bureaucratic constraints by waiving various administrative requirements, such as grace periods and documentation requirements that might complicate have previously been used by the Department of Education to relieve active-duty personnel from
It is inconceivable, when it passed the HEROES Act, that Congress thought it was authorizing anything like the administrations across-the-board debt cancellation, which will result in around half a trillion dollars or more in losses to the federal treasury.
Now, this lawsuit is still pending.
However, this is where things, you can say, got a little bit interesting.
Because on the very same day that this lawsuit was filed, on the very same day that this lawsuit, which claims that the whole plan is illegal, was filed, well, the Biden administration very quietly began to drastically scale back the eligibility of those who can actually receive this debt forgiveness.
It's Specifically, on that very same day, on September 29th of this year, the requirements were changed such that borrowers who have federal student loans that are owed to private entities rather than to the Department of Education itself will no longer qualify for the relief program, which is a direct reversal to their previous claims.
Because earlier, when this program was first announced, the Biden administration specifically said that borrowers with student loans owned by private entities would still qualify for a relief of somewhere between $10,000 to $20,000.
However, when you go to their website now, this is what the program states, quote, And this reversal, well, it does affect quite a lot of people, given the fact that over 4 million student loan borrowers took out these privately held loans through either the Federal Family Education Loan Program or the Federal Perkins Loan Program.
Now, in trying to explain this move, the Department of Education released a statement saying this in part, quote, Our goal is to provide relief to as many eligible borrowers as quickly and as easily as possible.
And this will allow us to achieve that goal while we continue to explore additional legally available options to provide relief to borrowers with privately owned Federal Family Education Loan Program loans and Perkins loans, including whether Federal Family Education Loan Program borrowers could receive one-time debt relief without needing to consolidate.
Meaning, in plain English, that these particular individuals, the 4 million or so Americans who have federal student loans that are held by private companies, are in a state of limbo, with the government unwilling to give them any loan forgiveness.
They are, of course, joined by the people who have already paid back their student loans, as well as the people who never took out student loans in the first place.
All of them, as a group, get nothing.
Regardless, even with these caveats drawn out, the student loan forgiveness program by the Biden administration will cost the federal government a staggering $379 billion over the span of 10 years.
That's an estimate from the Department of Education itself.
$379 billion.
That's more than a third of a trillion dollars.
Furthermore, it's really worth highlighting that the government doesn't actually have its own money.
You know that.
They have money that they take through us through taxes.
Or, of course, they have money that they borrow from the Federal Reserve That the Federal Reserve prints and loans to them.
But of course, we also pay for that money through inflation.
But it gets even deeper than that, which I'll explain to you right after I show you this beautiful coin.
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Or text Roman to 65532.
The link will also be down in the description box below.
And then let's head on back to the studio.
And so, let's actually consider how much the student loan forgiveness program will cost you and me, the American taxpayer.
Right now, in this country, we have about 330 million people.
But that, of course, includes babies and children.
And so, when you only look at the people who file tax returns, you get about 148 million people.
However, many of the people who file tax returns actually get more money back from the government than they pay in.
And so, according to the American Tax Foundation, quote, the top 50% of all taxpayers paid 97% of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50% paid the remaining 3%.
And so, if you take 148 million tax returns and you divide them in half, you get 74 million.
These 74 million people paid 97% of all income taxes.
And so then, in order to see how much these productive, taxpaying citizens will pay for this plan, you take $379 billion, that's the price tag for the student loan forgiveness program, and you reduce it by 3%, which comes out to be $367 billion.
You then divide $367 billion by the 74 million taxpayers who actually foot the bill, and you get $4,959.
Meaning that if you happen to be in the top 50% of income earners here in America, meaning that you pay more taxes than you get back from the government, then this plan will cost you $4,900 over the next 10 years.
Now, of course, that's not perfect math.
It doesn't account for things like corporate taxes, tariffs, and things like that.
But also usually corporate taxes get passed down to customers like you and me in the form of higher prices.
And so ultimately the bottom line is that this plan will be paid for by you and me, the American citizens, in one shape, form, or other.
Whether those American citizens went to college or not.
Which is kind of how this issue is currently divided in this country.
Because while on the one hand, Joe Biden has praised this program as giving people a fair shot, Republicans have largely been critical of it, saying that it essentially will force lower and middle income Americans to pay for the education of those who will eventually enter higher income jobs at a later time.
Here's, for instance, what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
Quote, President Biden's student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteer to serve in our armed forces in order to avoid taking on debt.
However, regardless of that pushback and regardless of this lawsuit from the six states, as well as other lawsuits that are making their way through the legal system, well, the student debt relief program has officially launched.
They have their website up and running, and people are already going there to sign up for their debt relief.
And what's interesting to note is that because this is, of course, being run by a government bureaucracy, well, the Department of Education just came out and announced that just to run the website, just to run the application part of this program, it will cause the U.S. government, meaning the U.S. taxpayers, $100 million per year.
$100 million just to run the application process.
I guess that's just the cost of the government doing anything.
Regardless, what's interesting to note, at least in my opinion, is that when the student loan debt program was first announced back in August, when it was first announced by Joe Biden, it was met with a flurry of national fanfare, with front-page articles in almost every major newspaper talking about it.
However, when the Department of Education began to reduce their coverage and reduce the eligibility requirements, well, isn't it interesting?
The same media outlets, which heralded the move when it was made initially, were pretty quiet, devoting almost no airtime to the new developments.
It's kind of interesting how that all works.
Regardless, if you'd like to read more about this decreasing eligibility, as well as the text of this lawsuit from the six different states, well, I'll throw both of that into the description box below this video so you can check it out.
And of course, that's the description box right below that like button that I hope you take a moment to smash, as well as that subscribe button that I hope you also smash if you haven't already.
That way we can get this type of honest news coverage delivered directly into your YouTube feed every time we publish it.
And lastly, as I mentioned in the last two episodes, but I believe it's worth mentioning once again, over on EpicTV, we just published an awesome exclusive episode detailing how, in their latest formulation for their updated booster shot, Pfizer never tested that formulation on humans.
And instead, prior to approval, they only tested it on mice.
And not even a lot of mice.
They only tested it on eight mice.
Again, their new formulation, prior to getting FDA approval, that particular formulation was never tested on humans and only mice.
Now, there's a lot more to that particular story, and I'd love to actually put it here on YouTube so that more people can have access to it, but unfortunately, the regime of censorship might just pick up on certain keywords and kill that episode.
And so, we have to publish it on Epic TV. The link to it will be right there at the top of the description box.
I hope you check it out.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epic Times.
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