Student Loans: How Nancy Pelosi and her Billionaire Friends Mary and Steven Lost the the Election.
Joe Biden is Justified for being furious with Pelosi and her Friends.
In the 2020 election, 40 Million distressed student loan borrowers (i.e. underwater on their debt)- were strongly compelled to vote for Joe Biden based upon his promises to both cancel student debt, and also return bankruptcy rights to the loans. While his “Up to $20,000” cancellation attempt as President wasn’t super impressive compared to his pre-election promises, it was at least something.
But elite, San Francisco real estate billionaire Mary Swig didn’t like it. She was determined to kill it.
She and her husband circulated a memo claiming that the President didn’t have the power to cancel the debt by executive order, and that any loan cancellation had to go through Congress. They pushed this memo around the Democratic upper echelons.
The Swig’s memo was outrageously false. Trump cancelled student loans by executive order twice. First, for 25,000 disabled veterans in 2019, then for everyone when he paused payments at the onset of Covid, which cancelled billions in INTEREST. This required nothing from the Treasury (no money was spent), and it added nothing to the national debt. There was no controversy or lawsuits.
Cancellation by Congress, because of “Paygo” rules, requires Congress to raise new money to “pay for” loans that the federal government already owns, despite the fact that Congress gave the Secretary of Education to “waive, compromise, and release” federally owned student loan debt with no restrictions in 1965. To force Congress to pass new legislation to do this is massively expensive, unnecessary, and frankly ridiculous. Scholars from Harvard, Yale, and other places all agree on this point.
But shortly after the Swig’s circulated their memo, Nancy Pelosi was repeating their talking points publicly. So was Susan Rice and other leading Democrats. When the Supreme Court ruled against the cancellation in a lawsuits brought (predictably) by Republican interests, Chief Justice Roberts mentioned Pelosi by name in his opinion, and even quote her directly in it.
Pelosi, Swig, Rice and other Democratic elites essentially gave the Court the political permission structure necessary to rule against cancellation.
This was a bitter disappointment to 40 Million student loan borrowers who were either unable to pay, or were paying but their loan balances were still increasing. A very bitter disappointment.
Interestingly: The Swig Family launched Kamala Harris’ career in San Francisco many years ago, and this is not disputed. While Kamala Harris said nothing negative about Biden’s cancellation attempt publicly, it is common knowledge that she was essentially raised by these people, and so her fealty to them to this day should come as no surprise.
After Kamala was installed as Joe Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, all talk from the campaign about student loans disappeared. Kamala’s agenda for student loans consisted of exactly one, vague sentence compared to Biden’s detailed plan promising to both cancel broad swaths of the debt, and return bankruptcy protections to it.
On the campaign trail, Kamala said, literally, nothing about student loans.
So when the election finally happened last week, the 40 Million student loan borrowers sweating bullets over their loans had none of the assurances from Kamala that they had from Biden. She, Pelosi, and the Democrats had essentially betrayed and abandoned them. Make no mistake: these were not elites. In fact, 40% of these people never graduated. Tens of millions went to trade schools, community colleges. Most identified, politically, as either Republican or independent.
A swing of 11 million votes from the Democrats to Trump and the Republicans between 2020 and 2024 came as no surprise to those following the student loan issue closely. While the Republicans (obviously)played their part, the voters have known their anti-borrower position on student loans for decades, that had not changed in this election. What did change were the Democrats.
Make no mistake: This started with Mary Swig and Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi deserves the Lion’s share of the credit for this loss.
If the Democrats want to learn from this disaster, they should start there. They should get rid of leaders- like Pelosi- who are swayed by out-of-touch, elite billionaire crowd who have anti-citizen, pro-government, selfish agendas, and reconnect themselves with their constituents. They should start with the 40 Million student loan borrowers they screwed over so badly in this election.
Frankly, Joe Biden should re-embrace his 2020 agenda, go big, and actually do what he promised on student loans. That would be solving a very large problem, prevent massive future social harm and unrest, and save his legacy. Not to mention: the future of the Democratic party as a viable entity depends upon it.
Alan Collinge is Founder of StudentloanJustice.Org and Author of The Student Loan Scam (Beacon Press).