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Right-Wing Media Smear Student Loan Relief With Deception And Distortion

Right-Wing Media Smear Student Loan Relief With Deception And Distortion

Since President Joe Biden announced his administration’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for low-income and middle-class Americans, conservative media figures have launched a full-throated attack against loan forgiveness.

On Wednesday, the Department of Education released a statement that laid out its plan to relieve debt for both undergraduate and graduate borrowers. Americans annually making $125,000 or less or living in a joint household with an annual income of $250,000 or less are eligible to have $10,000 of federal student loan debt forgiven. Individuals who received the Pell Grant, which provides federal aid to low-income students, are eligible to have an additional $10,000 of student debt canceled. The Education Department also extended its pause on student loan repayment through December 31 and proposed that monthly repayments be capped at 5% of a borrower’s monthly income.

The amount of student debt in the United States has doubled in the last decade, and roughly one in five Americans have student loans. These loans represent drastic economic setbacks for borrowers as one of the greatest contributors to household debt. Over time, the overbearing stress associated with debt can also lead to negative psychological outcomes. On a wider scale, outstanding student loans can reduce consumer spending and diminish business growth. Canceling student debt aims to lessen these consequences and reduce wealth disparities among vulnerable populations most likely to borrow money for school such as nonwhite and first-generation students.

Despite these benefits, right-wing media figures have flooded online spaces and cable news with bad-faith takes and misleading commentary on student debt forgiveness. In reality, the cancellation of student debt marks a significant step toward closing wealth gaps and improving the lives of millions.

Right-wing claim: Loan forgiveness favors the rich

Reality: Most of the student aid relief will benefit those earning less than $75,000. The Biden administration’s plan to cancel student debt is targeted to assist largely low- and middle-income Americans struggling with debt. According to the Department of Education, “Among borrowers who are no longer in school, nearly 90% of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year.”

  • On Fox’s Outnumbered, former Trump White House press secretary and current Fox host Kayleigh McEnany said, “Make no mistake: This is a handout to the rich.”
  • Fox anchor Sandra Smith suggested that low-income Americans “are going to be on the hook” for the student debt of the upper class.
  • During the August 24 edition of The Five, Fox host Jesse Watters mocked loan forgiveness, saying, “I want to congratulate all the rich whites with graduate degrees who live on the coasts and are making six figures.” He also called Biden’s plan “reverse class warfare,” adding, “It's like you rob the poor to pay the rich.”
  • On Hannity, guest host Pete Hegseth and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) both framed debt cancellation as a “wealth transfer” that benefits the rich at the expense of middle America.

Right-wing claim: Inflation will be made worse by loan forgiveness

Reality: Any inflation caused by loan forgiveness is expected to be minimal and will be offset when debt payments resume in January. Right-wing media are largely reliant on a blog post for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which argues that Biden’s decision will worsen inflation. According to the Roosevelt Institute, the CRFB purposefully distorted its deficit analysis, and the results actually indicate that any inflation from debt cancellation is not only minimal, but will be offset by payments restarting in January 2023.

Student debt cancellation is also more likely to allow recipients to either pay other debts or build savings, rather than increase spending. This will not impact inflation, but improve the immediate and future financial security of millions of Americans. This will allow longer-term benefits for the economy, as those individuals will be able to buy a house, have children, or start their own business.

  • During a panel on The Faulkner Focus, guest anchor Sandra Smith asked Fox News contributor Richard Fowler, “Doesn't this effort to forgive or cancel this student loan debt, doesn't it sort of undermine Congress' efforts to try to bring down inflation? Won't this government spending just lead to more high prices?”
  • Fox News contributor Brian Brenberg claimed that inflation reduction is “gone,” adding, “It wasn't true in the first place and it’s gone three times over now. So if you are one of those senators who made a deal because you wanted to promise the American people we will get some deficit reduction, guess what? You got run over by a truck. It was called student loan relief.”
  • Right-wing outlet Just the News published an article titled “Biden student loan plan expected to worsen inflation, benefit higher-income earners,” citing the flawed CRFB analysis.

Right-wing claim: Loan forgiveness is unfair to those without student debt

Reality: Forgiving student loans for those currently saddled with excessive debt is a small step in addressing a dire problem faced by millions — not a slap in the face to those who did not take out loans or already paid them back. As a column for the Los Angeles Times argues:

The truth, of course, is that in a healthy society government policy moves ahead by taking note of existing inequities and striving to address them. Following the implications of the “I paid, why shouldn’t you” camp to their natural conclusion means that we wouldn’t have Social Security, Medicare or the Affordable Care Act today.

Those programs were all designed to relieve Americans of what Franklin Roosevelt called “the hazards and vicissitudes of life.” Is it really sensible to say that we shouldn’t have them because before their enactment seniors were left to starve and suffer illness without assistance, and some families needed to buy health coverage in an individual market that was closed to those with medical conditions or grotesquely overpriced?

  • On America’s Newsroom, Fox News contributor Brian Brenberg rhetorically asked the anchors, “Why did you pay off your loans? How foolish are you to be responsible like this? This is the thing that sticks in your stomach, right? There is so much rank injustice here. If you paid off your loans, you are feeling like a fool.”
  • On Twitter, right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh claimed, “There is no such thing as student loan forgiveness. There is only student loan transferral, where the debt is transferred from the person who took out the loan to someone else who did not take out the loan.”
  • During America Reports, anchor John Roberts characterized loan forgiveness as something critics are calling “fundamentally unfair.” Fox contributor Joey Jones agreed, saying, “There is certainly a fairness element here that doesn’t pan out.” The network also displayed a tweet from Jones that read “I cannot believe I gave two legs for my tuition. What a dope I am,” alluding to Jones’ double leg amputation incurred during his service as a Marine.
  • On The Five, co-host Jeanine Pirro claimed, “My heart bleeds for the people who actually went out and paid for their loans, who went without things, whose families said, ‘I'm sorry, we can't afford your loans.’” She then revealed that her family paid for her education. “I didn't have to take out loans because they paid for them. But they worked hard for their money. This is a giveaway and it's disgusting.”
  • Fox contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier declared, “It took me about 10 years to pay off $300,000 worth of debt that I incurred through medical school,” before complaining that the plan to cancel student debt is “not fair, and it continues to widen that wage gap.”

Right-wing claim: Biden lacks the legal authority to cancel student debt

Reality: The Biden administration repeatedly outlined its ability to issue student loan forgiveness. In a document released by the Department of Education, officials argued that under the 2003 HEROES Act, the administration has the power “to waive or modify the rules on federal student loans during a presidentially declared national emergency, including the current pandemic.” Additionally, the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice published a document that details the administration’s authority to cancel debt to alleviate financial hardship exacerbated by the pandemic.

  • On Fox’s The Five, co-host Jesse Watters deemed the cancellation of student debt “unconstitutional.” He also accused Biden of buying votes, saying, “You can’t raid the Treasury and cut checks to your favorite voters.” Watters asked, “Where did Biden get the power as the president to spend half a trillion dollars?”
  • During his Fox prime-time show, Watters claimed, “The president is just breaking the law and bribing voters and Congress doesn't care. … How is Joe raiding the Treasury behind Congress’ back and buying votes before an election not an abuse of power, not an obstruction of Congress?”
  • On Twitter, National Review senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty wrote, “The legal authority to do this just appeared out of nowhere magically!”
  • Fox host Laura Ingraham said that the loan forgiveness announcement adds “another example” to Biden’s “growing list of illegality.” A chyron during the segment read “Biden’s unconstitutional student loan scheme.”
  • Fox News contributor Karl Rove complained, “Where is the authority for the president to do this?”

Right-wing claim: Loan forgiveness will cost individual taxpayers an estimated $2,000 each

Reality: This is simply not how the U.S. tax system works. Conservative media are missing the context that the estimated figure is based on a report from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation that averages the estimated cost to taxpayers of all incomes over a decade. The report also notes that this figure “is not a perfect proxy for cost, however, given the U.S. tax code is progressive and tax burdens are not evenly distributed across households.” For low-income taxpayers, the report estimates the average cost will be much lower than right-wing media are suggesting: The estimated cost for those making $50,000 or less annually is $158.27, and the estimated cost for those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 is $866.87.

  • Fox Business correspondent Hillary Vaughn repeated the claim that loan forgiveness will amount to “about $2,000 per taxpayer,” citing the National Taxpayers Union Foundation without context.
  • Fox’s Jesse Watters claimed that loan forgiveness amounts to “a war on the working class,” stating, “This loan cancellation will cost the average taxpayer over two grand a year.” In actuality, the report referenced by Watters estimates the cost to taxpayers over the span of 10 years.
  • During an appearance on Fox & Friends, Fox Business contributor Dan Roccato also used the $2,000 figure, claiming, “One estimate I saw last night was about two grand or so for the average taxpayer over the life of this thing.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
#Endorse This: Dark Brandon Strikes Obnoxious Reporter Over Student Loans

#Endorse This: Dark Brandon Strikes Obnoxious Reporter Over Student Loans

In response to Donald Trump's MAGA deplorables tagging President Biden as [expletive deleted] "Brandon" following a NASCAR event, progressives have promoted a mocking meme known as "Dark Brandon."

Taking root on Reddit, Twitter, and TikTok over the past few months, Dark Brandon took the leap mainstream discourse -- especially among Biden aides -- after the president racked up another major victory with the Inflation Reduction Act. Now after wiping out $10,000-$20,000 in federal student debt, Democrats are thoroughly trolling Republicans with their heroic meme.

Meidas Touch just released a Dark Brandon video that puts an obnoxious reporter on blast for attacking Biden's efforts to help lift the burden on poverty on working Americans.

Watch the clip below:


@meidastouch Dark Brandon: Eliminator of the Student Loans, Destroyer of the Double Standards #DarkBrandon #StudentLoans #MeidasTouch ♬ original sound - MeidasTouch.com
In Trump’s Budget, Both Epic Betrayal And Mathematical Fraud

In Trump’s Budget, Both Epic Betrayal And Mathematical Fraud

Elect a fraudster to the presidency — remember Trump University and the Trump Foundation? — and he will soon deliver a fraudulent budget. What makes this presidential fraud’s first budget so special is its perpetration of egregious trickery on more than one level, simultaneously.

Aside from defense spending, the Trump budget violates nearly every programmatic promise he made to voters last year. And adding insult to real injuries, he pretends to fulfill his promise to balance the budget with fake numbers.

 Not only are the numbers phony, but they represent the most audacious mathematical con game in a federal budget that anyone in Washington can remember. It is phonier than the phony budgets cooked up during the Reagan era, when the president’s own budget director eventually confessed, “None of us really understands what’s going on with all these numbers.”

Trump’s numbers aren’t really so hard to understand. They’re just hard to believe. First, he projects an average three percent growth in gross domestic product over the next decade, which no sane economist of either party considers possible, let alone likely. Then he estimates that this economic spurt will produce $2 trillion in federal revenues — and he counts those trillions twice in the same budget. It’s hard to believe but true: The same $2 trillion is supposed to offset the Trump tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers, and to balance the budget over the next ten years.

 Hillary Clinton peppered her Wellesley College commencement address Friday with barbs aimed at her rival in last year's presidential election, criticizing President Donald Trump's budget proposal as a mean-spirited

So Trump is pretending that his tax cuts will produce revenue growth instead of revenue deficits. And he is claiming that his pretend $2 trillion will somehow fill up a $4 trillion hole. When reporters pointed out that this doesn’t add up as economics or arithmetic, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney amazingly affirmed that he had set down this double counting of trillions of dollars “on purpose.” He went on to claim that the budget would work out anyway because its other calculations are so “conservative.”

 Meanwhile, the details of Trump’s budget show in black-and-white just how coldly he swindled the voters who believed him last year.

 At the big rallies where he basked in their adulation, Trump’s supporters heard him promise, again and again, that he would “save Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, without cuts.” They heard him angrily accuse other Republican candidates of wanting to cut those popular, vital, and successful programs. They heard him vow to “solve the student loan crisis,” which was hurting their kids, because they “should not be asked to pay more on their loans than they can afford and the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.” They heard him guarantee, in the most emotional terms, that their narcotics-addicted families, friends and neighbors, would receive “the top treatment” necessary to “get better.” They heard him swear to expand Medicaid treatment in communities ravaged by opioid addiction. And they wildly applauded when he described a trillion-dollar infrastructure program to rebuild the nation and create millions of high-wage jobs.

According to his budget –grandly titled “A New Foundation For American Greatness” — those speeches were all hyperbole or, to put it less politely, a pack of lies.

There is in that document no sign of a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, just the mindless observation that “simply providing more federal funding for infrastructure is not the solution.” There is no expansion of treatment slots for opioid addiction, just massive cutbacks in all drug treatment and prevention programs. There is no solution to the student-loan crisis, just the elimination of the entire federally subsidized student-loan program and the public service loan forgiveness program, which will make life worse for millions of young Americans. There is no plan to protect Social Security or Medicaid, just nearly a trillion dollars in reductions in Medicaid funding that will cut off health care for at least 14 million low-income Americans, including children, and a steep cut in Social Security disability programs.

Of course there are mammoth tax cuts for the wealthiest fraction of one percent at the plutocratic top, the same people whose loopholes Trump was once so sternly determined to close.

Only a politician who  assumes his supporters will never figure out how he scammed them would attempt such an epic betrayal. And perhaps that is the worst insult of all.

Ask Carrie: Should I Consolidate My Student Loans?

Ask Carrie: Should I Consolidate My Student Loans?

Dear Carrie: I’ve been carrying a number of both federal and private student loans for several years. While I’ve been able to keep up on payments, I’m thinking about consolidating to make things simpler. Is that a good idea? — A Reader

Dear Reader: You’re absolutely right that consolidating your student loans could make life a lot simpler. You’d have a single payment with a single due date. You could put that payment on automatic and be done with it.

But while simpler is preferable, there are other factors to consider. What will your new interest rate be? Do you want to lengthen or shorten the term? Will consolidation affect federal forgiveness or repayment plans? To me, it’s not just about simplifying your life, but also about improving your financial situation.

There are a couple of ways to go, so let’s start by looking at consolidation options, then go deeper into how to decide what’s best for you.

Ways to Consolidate

In the past, federal and private loans had to be kept separate. But as of 2014, it’s possible to combine them. Since you have both types of loans, you have a couple of choices. You could:

–Consolidate federal and private loans separately. You’d then have only two payments. You consolidate federal loans through the Direct Consolidation Loan program run by the Department of Education. Both subsidized and unsubsidized loans are eligible. You can get a complete list of eligible loans at studentaid.ed.gov.

The Department of Education doesn’t handle private loans. To consolidate those, you’d go to a private lender such as a bank. The process is a bit different because, in this case, you’re actually refinancing your loans. Different lenders offer different rates and terms, so you’d want to do a bit of comparison-shopping.

–Combine federal and private loans into one new loan. This process, in effect, pays off all your current loans and gives you one new loan, with one monthly payment. Again, you do this through a private lender.

Important Things to Consider

There are pluses and minuses to each option. To decide what is best, look at three important factors.

–Interest rates. Consolidation may result in a lower interest rate — especially if any of your loans have adjustable rates — but that’s not always the case.

When you consolidate federal loans, your new interest rate is a weighted average of your current rates rounded up to the nearest 1/8 of 1 percent. It could be higher or lower. The positive is it’s fixed, so you can be confident that your payments won’t go up over time. The downside is that if interest rates decrease, you will be left with the higher rate.

With a private lender, interest rates are more flexible. In fact, you may be able to significantly lower your interest rate, depending on factors such as your credit score (the higher your score, the better the deal), income and savings.

–Loan terms. When you consolidate, you can either lengthen or shorten the term of your loan.

Repayment schedules with the Direct Consolidation Loan program range from 10-30 years. When you lengthen the term, your monthly payments may go down, but the amount of interest you pay in the long run will most likely go up. Increase a 10-year loan to 25 years, and your monthly payment could go down about 40 percent; however, you could end up paying almost twice as much interest over the life of the loan. Of course, you do have the flexibility to pay it off more quickly.

With a private lender, you may be able to considerably shorten the term, but you’ll be tied into a higher monthly.

–Extra benefits. Are there any extra benefits attached to your loans? Some lenders offer reduced payments for direct debits or interest rate discounts when you pay on time. Take that into consideration.

Likewise, be aware of federal loan-repayment and forgiveness programs. For instance, federal Direct Loans qualify for income driven repayment plans where payments are capped at 10 or 15 percent of discretionary income. After 20-25 years of consistent, timely payments, the balance of the loan is forgiven. While not all federal student loans qualify for this program, a Federal Direct Consolidation Loan does.

Also, do you qualify for a loan forgiveness program such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, specifically designed for public service workers such as teachers, nurses and those in the military? PSLF offers loan forgiveness after 10 years of payments.

Private loans may not qualify for these programs. If you combine your loans into one private loan, be sure to check that out.

Before You Decide

One potential benefit of having multiple loans is that it may provide you with more flexibility for repayment. For example, let’s say that in a few years, you’re in a position to write down your balance. By paying off a discreet loan, you would eliminate that payment entirely, reducing your monthly outlay. However, if you have consolidated all of your loans, you will be committed to the same monthly payment regardless of the remaining balance.

Another strategy would be to make additional principal payments to your highest interest loan while you continue to make the minimum monthly payments on your lower interest loans. That way, you can pay off the highest interest loan first, and effectively lower your overall interest rate.

Weighing the Pros and Cons

As you can see, consolidation is not a straightforward decision. You have to think beyond simplicity to how a new loan might affect your finances over time. Make sure you understand the consequences.

With this in mind, I suggest you do a little more research. Two good resources are the Department of Education (www.ed.gov) and Finaid.org. You might also want to check with your financial advisor who can help you look at the big picture before making your decision.

Realize, too, that student loans are getting a lot of political attention, so whatever you decide to do now, keep your eyes and ears open for any new opportunities in the future.

Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, Certified Financial Planner, is board chairwoman and president of the Charles Schwab Foundation and author of “The Charles Schwab Guide to Finances After Fifty.” Read more at http://schwab.com/book. You can email Carrie at askcarrie@schwab.com. For more updates, follow Carrie on LinkedIn and Twitter (@CarrieSchwab). This column is no substitute for individualized tax, legal or investment advice. Where specific advice is necessary or appropriate, consult with a qualified tax adviser, CPA, financial planner or investment manager. To find out more about Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2016 CHARLES SCHWAB & CO., INC. MEMBER SIPC.
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Photo: Jorge Villalba poses for a portrait on Sept. 3, 2015 in Encino, Calif. Villaba is struggling to pay off student loan debt. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS)