Tag: student loans

The Democrat Plan to Redistribute Wealth to the Wealthier

Two hypothetical college graduates who are married now have a combined annual income of $240,000; they each earn $120,000 per year.

Should an American who graduated from high school but never went to college—and who now works as a delivery truck driver, earning $43,950 per year (the median annual earnings for that job) be forced to help pay off the federal student loans of these two college graduates who make $240,000?

If former President Joe Biden had gotten his way, that truck driver and other hardworking American taxpayers would indeed have seen their tax dollars help pay off those loans.

When Biden was running for president in April 2020, he announced his plan for “forgiving student debt.”

“I propose to forgive all undergraduate tuition-related federal student debt from two- and four-year public colleges and universities for debt-holders earning up to $125,000,” Biden said.

His plan, he said, would also “[i]mmediately cancel a minimum of $10,000 of student debt per person.”

After he was elected president, Biden did not get Congress to enact new legislation to implement this plan. Instead, he took unilateral executive action in an attempt to do so—and his administration claimed this action was justified under a law that had been enacted under former President George W. Bush.

In 2003, Bush signed the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, aka the HEROES Act.

This act, said its official summary, “[a]uthorizes the Secretary of Education to waive or modify any requirement or regulation applicable to the student financial assistance programs under title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965 as deemed necessary with respect to an affected individual who: (1) is serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency; (2) is performing National Guard duty during a war, operation, or emergency; (3) resides or is employed in an area that is declared a disaster area by any Federal, State, or local official in connection with a national emergency; or (4) suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency.”

As the nation headed into the 2022 midterm elections, Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan. “On August 24, 2022,” explained the Congressional Research Service, “the Biden Administration announced it would invoke the Higher Education Relief Opportunities Act of 2003 (HEROES Act) to carry out a ‘one-time student loan debt relief policy’ to ‘address the financial harms of the [COVID-19] pandemic for low- and middle-income borrowers.’ Under the one-time student debt relief policy (HEROES Act policy), ED (Education Department) would have cancelled up to $10,000 in qualifying HEA Title IV federal student loan debt for borrowers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) in 2020 or 2021 of less than $125,000 (for individuals or married borrowers who filed federal income taxes separately) or $250,000 (for married couples filing jointly and certain other individuals).”

So, under Biden’s plan, a law that had been designed to help individuals “serving on active duty during a war or other military operation or national emergency” or had “suffered direct economic hardship as a direct result of a war or other military operation or national emergency” could be used to grant general federal student loan forgiveness in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Sept. 26, 2022, the Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., that estimated the cost of the Biden plan. “As of June 30, 2022, 43 million borrowers held $1.6 trillion in federal student loans,” said this letter. “About $430 billion of that debt will be canceled, CBO estimates.”

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Democrat Socialist Who Wants to ‘Tax the Rich’ Complains About Paying Her Own Back Taxes and Student Loan Debt

Angie Nixon, the Democratic Socialist running for U.S. Senate in Florida, is not interested in paying her fair share.

The ‘tax the rich’ leftist commented during a podcast appearance this summer that she does not want to pay her back taxes or her student loan debts.

How incredibly typical.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Nixon’s personal income in 2025 clocked in at well over five times the median income of the average American worker, yet she failed to set aside enough of her substantial earnings to pay her taxes and repay her student loans. The dues-paying Democratic Socialist reported in her latest disclosure submitted in Florida that, as of Aug. 25, she owes nearly $14,000 in unpaid taxes to the IRS on top of $17,600 in unpaid federal student loans.

Nixon’s unpaid taxes and student loan debts are a drop in the bucket compared with the extraordinary and diversified income she earned in 2025. Still, the Democratic Socialist, who wants to institute a 5 percent annual wealth tax on billionaires, recently complained about how “crazy” it is that the federal government is forcing her to pay her own fair share.

“Your girl over here is on a payment plan to pay the IRS $12,000 back,” Nixon said during a podcast interview in July. “And listen, I ain’t made $105 billion, but you making me pay $12,000 to the feds? Like, really? That’s what we’re doing? And they already took some of the taxes away anyway. I paid over $10,000. It’s just, it is crazy.”…

As for Nixon’s unpaid federal student loan debt, she says she won’t repay it. In October 2023, when Congress ended the pandemic-era student loan moratorium, Nixon, a University of Florida graduate, declared on Facebook she was “above” paying back her educational debts.

“Dear Student Loans. It’s above me now,” Nixon wrote. “I don’t wanna pay it back. Education supposed to be free.”

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The Decline Of Higher Education Continues

During my second career teaching high school English, I noticed several darkly funny but disturbing trends in “higher” education.  They were fueled by three primary drivers: abandoning merit, the federal government taking over the student loan industry, and DEI hysteria.

It was Barack Obama who federalized the student loan industry, pushing the idea that everyone should go to college.

To make that idea a reality, it was necessary for the government to guarantee student loans.

That had plenty of unfortunate and foreseeable effects. Because Colleges no longer had any financial skin in the game, they went on a mad administrator-hiring binge, which required enormous amounts of money, which required unprecedented numbers of students. 

Combined with a faux-religious devotion to DEI, colleges admitted all manner of people who in past years would have reasonably been found to be poorly suited to do college-level work. To cover this, it was necessary to do away with any sort of predictive testing like the SAT. All that was required for college admission was a student loan, unless one was a white male applying at an Ivy League school. Those guys, regardless of academic qualification, were often denied.

Enormous DEI departments with all manner of administrators and functionaries were established, and hundreds of millions were wasted on DEI gurus imported to inspire them.

So unprepared were so many, colleges were forced to establish remedial high schools on campus. It was a great scam. Full tuition for no credit, and blame students’ lack of ability on high school teachers like me, who could have told them who wasn’t academically capable if anyone had bothered to ask.

Grade inflation was a direct result of these disasters. It was necessary to hide the scams, so professors were required not only to dumb down the content of their classes and to require far less work, but to award unearned grades. An entire generation of college students was conditioned to expect maximum grades for minimum and poor work. And God help any professor who gave a minority student the grade their lack of work deserved.

As a result, innumerable students took 6-7 years to get a 4-year degree at enormous cost, but many simply dropped out without a degree, bearing enormous debt they had no credentials or ability to pay off.

I’m certainly not arguing college should be denied to anyone. I’ve known many people who struggled greatly but managed to earn a degree and were better and more productive people for it. I am arguing for rational decision-making and fiscally sound, ethical colleges.

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AOC’s student debt unpaid as she embarks on costly egg-freezing journey

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has made at least $174,000 annually for nearly eight years as a member of Congress, but like many of her “Squad” colleagues, she has yet to put a substantial dent in her student loan debt, according to House financial disclosures.

The Bronx and Queens Democrat has owed between $15,001 and $50,000 in federal student loan debt since her election to the House in 2018. That’s the same amount she owes now, according to her August disclosure, where lawmakers report ranges for debt and income.

The “Tax the Rich!” pol reported less than $81,000 in total assets.

Recently, Ocasio-Cortez has suggested that she’d been saving up for some time instead to freeze her eggs, a process that can cost between $10,000 and $20,000 per cycle.

“I got sworn into the House of Representatives when I was 29 years old,” she said in an Instagram video. “There’s this flip side where you have to then grow up in the public eye in a time that most people usually get to grow more privately.”

Ocasio-Cortez amassed the loans while attending Boston University as an international relations and economics major between August 2007 and May 2011 — and went on to tend bar in Manhattan before her successful run for Congress.

The “Squad” Democrat has consistently backed student debt cancellation. During former President Joe Biden’s term, she even pushed the 46th commander-in-chief to cancel as much as $50,000 in debt per student borrower. But she’s not the only US lawmaker who’s still holding student loans.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) has held up to $50,000 over the past eight years in student debt — despite her net worth ballooning for a time to as much as $30 million due to her husband’s winery and venture capital businesses.

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The Student Loan Crisis Is Exploding

Student loan defaults have surged to 9.2 million borrowers, representing roughly one in every five people with student debt. What is astonishing is the speed of the deterioration. There were approximately 6 million borrowers in default last August. That figure jumped to 7.7 million by December. By April it had reached 9.2 million. Another 3 million borrowers are reportedly at least 90 days delinquent and appear headed in the same direction.

The government suspended reality for years through payment pauses, forbearance programs, and emergency measures that temporarily masked the problem. Now collections have resumed. Wage garnishment is returning and borrowers are once again being confronted with debts that never disappeared. Politicians celebrated the pause as though the crisis had been solved. All they really did was postpone the reckoning.

What nobody wants to admit is that the student loan system became fundamentally broken the moment the federal government guaranteed virtually unlimited lending. Once colleges realized that students could borrow almost any amount with government backing, tuition exploded. Universities had no incentive to control costs. They built lavish facilities, expanded administrations, hired armies of bureaucrats, and continuously raised tuition. Students were told that any debt was acceptable because a degree would guarantee future prosperity. The numbers tell a different story.

Tuition costs have risen by hundreds of percentage points over the past several decades, vastly outpacing inflation and wage growth. Yet many graduates entered labor markets where earnings never remotely matched the debt burden they accumulated. Entire generations were encouraged to believe that college was the only path to success. Many emerged with degrees carrying little market value but very real financial obligations.

Borrowers are returning to repayment obligations while facing some of the highest living costs in decades. Housing costs remain elevated. Insurance premiums continue rising. Food prices have increased substantially. Many young Americans are already delaying homeownership, marriage, and family formation. Now millions face renewed collection efforts and potential wage garnishment on top of those challenges. The economic pressure is becoming overwhelming.

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New Report Appears to Confirm Covenant School Shooter Audrey Hale Bought Guns With Student Loan Money

If you needed another reason to dislike student loan programs, you’re in luck.

The FBI has just released more pages from the manifesto of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale, which suggest that she bought the guns used in the 2023 shooting with money she had from a Pell Grant.

Hale’s parents suggested this two years ago and this report appears to confirm that.

The Tennessee Star reports:

Latest FBI Release of Covenant School Manifesto Files Appears to Confirm Trans-Identified Killer Bought Guns with Pell Grant Money

The FBI on Monday released another 230 manifesto pages written by Audrey Elizabeth Hale, the biological female who identified as a transgender man on March 27, 2023, when the 28-year-old killed six at the Covenant School in Nashville, the Christian elementary school she once attended.

This latest journal appears to have been written sometime in late 2021, and includes lengthy sections about the weapons the killer planned to use to commit a mass shooting at a school sometime that year.

Following multiple pages full of weapons to purchase, the journal includes a page labeled “Account Savings Record,” which appears to reference the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It also records multiple payments received from Nossi during the period when Hale attended the Nossi College of Art and Design in Nashville.

“FASFA [sic] grant checks started at $2,050.86,” wrote Hale at the top of the entry.

The page then lists a series of apparent ledger entries, starting with, “$2,656.87 (x3 checks from Nossi).” The next ledger entry states, “+$530.00 (x1 check Nossi) ($3,186.87).”

This reference to Hale’s federal student aid, located in the writings next to her entries about guns she considered buying, appears to corroborate the claims made by her parents to Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) detectives in 2023, when they told law enforcement their child purchased the firearms using federal Pell Grant money.

She apparently hated religion too, but that seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it?

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Education Department Ends Biden Student Loan Bailout

The Trump-McMahon Department of Education (DOE) has moved to end the last of the Biden administration’s large-scale, illegal federal student loan bailout programs.

DOE announced its agreement with Missouri to end the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, which was set to cost taxpayers almost $350 billion in a decade’s time. The Dec. 9 press release celebrated the move as being not only a win for taxpayers, but necessary clarity for borrowers duped by extravagant and unrealistic Democrat promises.

Why should waitresses, construction workers, plumbers, and other hardworking Americans pay off the college degrees of strangers? The federal government already funnels far too much money into higher education as it is. In fact, federal involvement in universities is what has driven up prices and spread wokeness for decades.

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New Illinois Law Going Into Effect January 1st Will Make Illegal Aliens Eligible for Student Financial Aid

The state of Illinois is about to make it possible for illegal aliens to access state and local student financial aid. Governor J.B. Pritzker has already signed the law and it goes into effect on January 1st of 2026.

This is happening as the Trump Justice Department is suing various states over this exact issue. Student financial aid that is meant for American citizens should not be going to people who are in the country illegally.

This is an issue that goes directly to the core of what Trump has run on repeatedly.

Breitbart News reports:

Illinois Law Granting Student Financial Aid to Illegal Aliens Goes into Effect January 1

A law signed by Gov. JB Pritzker (D-IL) that will make illegal alien students eligible for state and local financial aid–which detractors say will reduce grants and scholarships for citizens and legal residents–is set to go into effect January 1, 2026.

Pritzker signed House Bill 460 into law in August. It grants illegal aliens eligibility for grants, scholarships, stipends, and other state-funded student aid.

“If you live in Illinois and are pursuing higher education, you should have access to the same opportunities as your peers,” Illinois state Sen. Celina Villaneuva (D-Chicago) stated.

Advocates for illegal aliens believe that the law will help illegal alien students, who do not qualify for federal aid because they are not in the country legally, and that the state and local aid will boost their chances of going to college and joining the state’s workforce.

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Report: Ilhan Omar ‘in Collection Proceedings’ for Her Student Loans, Is Seeking to ‘Bully’ Her Way Out of Payments

For most Americans, a U.S. lawmaker with onerous student loan debt pushing for debt forgiveness would be viewed as a conflict of interest.

For at least one U.S. representative, it’s apparently a non-issue — and the American Accountability Foundation is livid about it.

According to the Daily Wire, Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has been accused by the watchdog group over a number of issues.

In a scathing letter sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson, American Accountability Foundation President Thomas Jones outed Omar’s dubious finances — and “bully” reputation.

“We are writing today to share serious concerns about abuse of office and abuse of government loans by a member of the House of Representatives, Representative Ilhan Omar,” Jones said.

According to Jones, Omar is actually in collection proceedings on her federally guaranteed student loans.

Citing her financial disclosures, Jones called out the fact that Omar “currently has between $15,001 and $50,000 in outstanding loans.”

Jones noted, “As you know, these loans are guaranteed by the United States Government and Representative Omar’s default would shift the cost of her student loans onto the U.S. taxpayer.”

“The fact that someone making $174,000 as a Member of Congress cannot pay their student loans is unconscionable and embarrassing.”

Jones wasn’t done, however, as he had more issues with Omar than just the poor stewardship of her money.

“Adding insult to injury, there are credible claims that she is using her influence as a Member of Congress to bully the Department of Education into not collecting the past-due payments,” Jones wrote. “We have promulgated a Freedom of Information Act request for correspondence from Representative Omar to fully understand the scale of her abuse of office.”

To ensure that the Treasury Department will not be on the hook for Omar’s defaulted student loans, Jones demanded a drastic move from Mike Johnson.

“We are calling upon you to instruct the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives to impound Representative Omar’s Congressional salary and pay it out to Nelnet, the servicer of her federal student loan, until such time as her payments are current.”

The Daily Wire posted the whole letter online, which can be read here.

Social media naturally had a field day with this news, especially those who are fed up with Omar’s far-left rhetoric.

But the discourse over Omar’s finances did not originate with this inquiry.

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White House agrees to cancel student debt for millions of borrowers

The Trump administration says it is canceling student debt for millions of borrowers — a pivot from its previous moves to block some loan forgiveness plans.

In an agreement with the American Federation of Teachers, the White House will again start processing student loan forgiveness for eligible borrowers in two income-driven repayment plans — Income-Contingent Repayment and Pay as You Earn — until they expire.

President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is slated to phase out those two programs by July 1, 2028. They have over 2.5 million enrollees total, a higher ed expert estimated.

“This is a tremendous win for borrowers. With today’s filing, borrowers can rest a little easier,” said Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director for Protect Borrowers, which acted as counsel for the teachers’ union.

“The US Department of Education has agreed to follow the law and deliver congressionally mandated affordable payments and debt relief to hard-working public service workers across the country, and will do so under court supervision. We fully intend to hold them to their word.”

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