• @givesomefucks
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    63 hours ago

    This is a program that existed for a very long time.

    The problem with it is when it was set up, some idiot put the loan companies in charge. And thru intentional incompetence most people didn’t get forgiveness when they should and the interest kept climbing for years.

    Biden had us pay the illegally charged interest rather than fight it.

    So we drastically overpaid for forgiveness borrowers should have had long ago.

    It’s good they finally got it, but so many more could have been forgiven for the same amount of money if we didn’t pay all that extra interest.

    John Oliver did an episode on it a couple months ago, maybe last season?

    • @[email protected]
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      2 hours ago

      This is a program that existed for a very long time

      7 years since the first person became eligible is a ‘very long time?’

      The problem with it is when it was set up, some idiot put the loan companies in charge. And thru intentional incompetence most people didn’t get forgiveness when they should and the interest kept climbing for years.

      So we’re just making shit up now?

      The department of education made the determination of who fulfilled the criteria to have their loans forgiven. Forgiveness was never based around distributing a set amount of money, but on completeting a specific payment regiment for 10 years with a qualifying employment category.

      The first year anyone was eligible for forgiveness was 2017. Do you remember who was president in 2017? Who he put in charge of the department of education? There was a deliberate effort by the Trump administration to sabatoge the program by denying approval for forgiveness on the basis of any minor technical or clerical deficiency they could come up with. Some months literally nobody got approved. Now also consider the kinds of people Davos hired for every role she could within the department. And now the kind of people they hired.

      And here you sit, just another asshole blaming Biden and Democrats for mess their predecessors went out of their way to create, because they didn’t clean it up instantly and perfectly.

      • @testfactor
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        -42 hours ago

        To be fair, it’s a little disingenuous to start counting from the time the first person became eligible, as all the rules had to be in place for over a decade prior to that.

        You’re framing it as a program that’s been around for 7 years, when the reality is that it’s been 17.

        Don’t disagree with most of your points, but the program itself has been around for quite a while.

        • @FiremanEdsRevenge
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          71 hour ago

          What’s disingenuous is Givesomefucks out right lying. But semantics are more your flavor I suppose.

        • @ABCDE
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          31 hour ago

          s a little disingenuous to start counting from the time the first person became eligible

          No it absolutely isn’t.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 hour ago

          No, it’s disingenuous to count the time a program was, by design, inoperable as functional because it existed on paper.

          When does the dam exist? On the day the blueprints are drawn up or on the day it starts filling with water?

          • @testfactor
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            248 minutes ago

            The word I would contest is “inoperable.”

            The system is more than just a retrospective yes or no after 10 years. You have to work with the DoEd to submit paperwork from your employer to make sure they qualify. You have to work with the DoEd to make sure the type of payments or deferments you’re doing are qualified. Etc.

            There have been government employees actively working with people on this for the whole of the 17 years. This is a program that has, in fact, “been around for a long time” in a meaningful way.

            Yes, the Trump Administration did a good awful job in trying to intentionally eff it up. But people were in fact able to get through it.

            Right now, I know several people who are just a few payments away from being able to qualify, but can’t due to payment freezes with the Mohela cutover and all the legal stuff going on with it. Which, to be clear, I’m not blaming on the Biden administration. But it isn’t like the program has made much meaningful headway in the past 4 years either.

            And it seems like this is the easier battle to win than general student loan forgiveness. Expand PSLF. Reduce the term to 5 years and reduce the administrative burdens and overhead. Allow a wider range of zero-cost-payment deferments to count as “qualified payments” towards the total payment number needed.

            These would be expansions on policy that have been unchallenged for the past 17 years. That passed through both houses of Congress. This is an easy win that would help ease the burden of millions of Americans. Especially teachers who are cripplingly underpaid and often require a masters degree.

        • @givesomefucks
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          50 minutes ago

          There’s rarely any using trying to respond with logic to a comment filled with insults…

          I explicitly blamed the people who set it up, and that account went off about how I’m blaming Biden.

          Logic didn’t get them to their current opinion, and logic won’t help them understand their misunderstanding, they’ll just keep throwing insults and not understanding.

          I just report and block those accounts, makes Lemmy a lot more civil when you don’t see the worst

          • @[email protected]
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            326 minutes ago

            and that account went off about how I’m blaming Biden.

            Biden had us pay the illegally charged interest rather than fight it.

            I guess someone else wrote his name in there.

            Charging borrowers interest is not illegal. Denying participation in government programs over trivial errors is not illegal. Declining to earnestly help people who are eligible rectify their deficient applications is not illegal. Picking a fight you are going to lose on the merits is not smart. Especially when it detracts time and effort away from the much more immediate and necessary goal of helping the large number of people who are still paying.