Real Talk: Student Loans, Kamala Harris and The Democrats.
They already betrayed the borrowers and are now abandoning them.
I’ve been studying the student loan problem in the U.S. for over 20 years now. I’m also a student loan borrower. I’ve broken news on the topic in media like 60 Minutes (top story), The Wall Street Journal, and many other places over the years. I’ve written hundreds of articles on the topic. I wrote the first book to be critical of the program. I’ve worked closely with 9 different Congresses through 4 different Presidential administrations during that time (mostly Democrats). Suffice it to say, I’ve lived and breathed this problem- particularly with an eye towards it’s political dimensions- and my insights are keen, and I don’t make claims I’m not sure of. I am also fiercely non-partisan.
If you are counting on the Democrats to solve your student loan problem, this article will not be pleasant. At all. There is, however, some hope at the end of this piece, so please read through to the end.
You won’t read this in any mainstream media, btw. Meaningful journalism on student loans has gone away over the past 10–15 years. So you heard this here first, and will likely only hear it here.
First, let’s be clear. The Republicans are essentially vicious, corrupted, and just horrible on this issue. A quick look at Project 2025 is all one needs to do to see that plainly. Anyone distressed by their student loans (the vast majority of borrowers) who votes for them this year expecting something good from them is either mentally impaired, or perhaps inebriated. It’s not going to happen.
But this article isn’t about the Republicans. I’ve written dozens of articles about them in the past few years, and there is no need to rehash them beyond what I just said. This article is about the Democrats.
I am very sorry to report: The Democrats have betrayed and abandoned student loan borrowers. This was not true 2 years ago, but it is absolutely and obviously true today. Kamala Harris, in particular, has longstanding associations and fealties which make it virtually certain that the viciously predatory federal student loan program will not be reined in, but rather will be perpetuated and even accelerated to the borrowers’ great misfortune.
So. There are two reforms that are important and in play in the student loan debate: Cancellation by executive order, and the return of bankruptcy rights to the debt. I and my group started the national conversation about cancelling student loans by executive order, and made it a viable concept when the petition we started in early 2020 grew to hundreds of thousands of signatures, attracted broad national media attention, and leading senators subsequently picked up and promoted the concept. We also have been the major drivers of any number of pieces of bankruptcy legislation going back to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s Student Borrower Bill of Rights Act in 2007, which we helped write. So you know, returning standard bankruptcy rights to the loans, as they exist for all other loans, lies at the core of the student loan issue. It is the absence of this leverage that has enabled most if not all of the predatory underpinnings of this lending program.
Joe Biden picked up both of these calls in his 2020 campaign. He promised to both cancel loans by executive order, and order the Department of Education to stop opposing federal student loan borrowers in bankruptcy court.
On student loan cancellation, however, the (feeble) attempt that Joe Biden made in 2023 was struck down by the Supreme Court. While most point to the obvious- republican Attorney’s General and their lawsuits- as being the reason the effort failed, a key (probably the key) reason was because of opposition to it from leading Democrats.
Shortly after the election of 2020, Steven and Mary Swig, a billionaire, San Francisco “Power Couple” credited with launching Kamala Harris’ career, quietly circulated a memo within Democratic circles declaring that the President could not cancel student loans by executive order.
Soon after, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Susan Rice, and others were parroting this memo, declaring that the President could not cancel the loans administratively.
When the Supreme Court handed down it’s verdict, Chief Justice John Roberts actually quoted Pelosi in the majority opinion.
On returning bankruptcy rights to student loans, President Biden did, indeed, stop “opposing” student loan borrowers in bankruptcy court, but the “New Bankruptcy Process” they put in it’s place effectively transferred the power to determine the case from the judges to the Departments of Education and Justice. The process has proven to be a cruel, expensive joke on the borrowers, where still, vanishingly few borrowers are getting discharges.
The Democrats in Congress viciously betrayed student loan borrowers during the first two years of the Biden Administration, where they controlled both the House and Senate. Dick Durbin, Judiciary Chairman, had a very good, bipartisan bill (S.9110) that would have returned bankruptcy rights to borrowers who had been out of school for ten years. The bill had bipartisan support, with Senators Josh Hawley and John Cornyn both cosponsoring the bill.
Leading Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, interestingly, refused to endorse the bill, and even had a hand in scuttling an important hearing for the bill. While Senator Durbin had publicly promised to get the bill up for a vote, he ultimately abandoned this legislation at the end of 2022.
Astoundingly, Durbin’s staff told me that this was due to opposition to the bill from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s), who didn’t like a very modest “clawback” provision that almost certainly would never have been enforced (The Department of Education rarely, if ever, enforces such penalties he colleges).
Even worse: The Democrats have been promising to returning bankruptcy legislatively for decades now. In fact, they had begun including it in their Party Platform going back to 2016.
This year, however, the Democratic Party has taken all of this language out of their platform. This is an obvious abandonment. It is nowhere to be found, and I and my group can find no one within the Democratic Party willing to explain this.
Kamala Harris has finally put out an “issues” section on her campaign website, and her agenda for student loans consists of exactly one sentence. Compare this with Joe Biden’s agenda (below). Clearly, we are left to our own devices to divine what a Harris Administration might do.
It is overwhelmingly obvious, given all of this evidence (or lack of evidence from Harris’ campaign) that:
-There is virtually no chance that Kamala Harris and the Democrats in Congress will pursue student loan cancellation by executive order.
-There is virtually no chance that Kamala Harris and the Democrats in Congress will even try to return bankruptcy rights to student loans.
Student loan borrowers everywhere, the large majority of whom are unable to make payments today, should be extremely worried about this. We are being opposed/abandoned by both parties.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
The Biden Administration will call in an “October Surprise”, cancel a few loans through their “Negotiated Rulemaking” process, and promise this will continue if Harris is elected. If she is elected, however, there will be no such cancellations. The process will be (and already has) been challenged in court. And decades of history has shown that nothing that has ever come from these NEGREG sessions has ever actually happened. The Gainful Employment Rule is just one example of many that bear this out beyond doubt.
You should know, Dear Reader: The Department of Education, the lending companies, and the entire ecosystem around that have NO INTENTIONS OF ACTUALLY CANCELLING STUDENT LOANS!. This is their cash cow, and they are fighting for it. You simply cannot- and must not believe ANY promises coming from the Department of Education, the President, or Congress on this topic. This has ALWAYS BEEN TRUE, AND CONTINUES TODAY.
I saw this coming at the end of 2022, and even launched my own Presidential campaign as a means to push both parties to commit to actually solving this problem (through bankruptcy and cancellation). We we are now less than 2 months away from the election, early voting starts in October, and the collection industry will be pursuing borrowers relentlessly beginning October 1st.
People reading this had better start fighting for themselves, in whatever form that may take. Neither party is fighting for us, and the next 4 years look more dire if we don’t have an impact on these poisonous politics before the election.
Please sign and share this petition if you are ready to fight.
