Steve Rhode points out that wholesale forgiveness of student loans is impossible. Bankruptcy Relief for distressed college debtors is the best option

 Millions of words have been written about the student loan crisis. Heck, I've probably written a couple of million words about it myself. 

For my money, Steve Rhode's succinct and cogent essay, published yesterday, is the best analysis of this catastrophe. Mr. Rhode explains why massive student-loan forgiveness is a bad idea. Instead, he argues that bankruptcy relief is the better option. He also points out the fatal flaws in the federal student-loan program, which have brought us to the brink of calamity.

I urge you to read Steve Rhode's essay in its entirety.  My commentary will highlight a few key points.

First of all, Rhode points out that taking out student loans to pay for a college education was a mistake for millions of Americans. He cites a New York Life survey, which found that the average student-loan borrower took 18.5 years to pay off student loans, starting at age 26 and ending at 45.

That is a significant portion of life to have to be tied to a student loan payment that should have been directed to saving for retirement and then mushroomed into a giant nest egg. It can take decades to recover from that financial mistake. But that’s not the only financial regret people have.

Shockingly, millions of Americans took out student loans and never finished their degrees. For those people, student loans are a dead loss.  Instead of enhancing their economic future, dropouts shot themselves in the foot by taking out student loans.

Rhode also points out (as have many others) that the for-profit college industry has wreaked havoc among a population of Americans who took out student loans to attend for-profit schools. He cites a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which found that “[s]tudents who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt and are more likely to default on their student loans than those attending similarly selective public schools.”

The Federal Reserve Bank study then went on to say: "Overall, our results indicate that, on average, for-profit enrollment leads to worse student loan outcomes for students than enrolling in a public college or university, which is driven by higher loan takeup and worse labor market outcomes."

The federal student loan program is a mess. It is probably the worst public policy decision Congress ever made when it launched a program more than a half-century ago that now has more than 40 million people ensnared by a total of $1.7 trillion in outstanding student-loan debt.

But massive student-loan forgiveness is not a viable option. 

First of all, wiping out all that debt is fundamentally unfair. And here I will quote Steve Rhode's analysis:

As Howard Dvorkin, Chairman of  Debt.com said, “Only one-third of the people in this country get a four-year college education. The two-thirds without a college education is expected to subsidize their education when it is very likely that they earn less than the people who are receiving the educational subsidy.” 

As Mr. Dvorkin pointed out, “The issue of forgiving debt is complicated. What about all the people that have already struggled to pay their debts, and now other people get loans forgiven. That’s not fair.”

In any event, as Mr. Rhode explained, millions of people are already in a loan forgiveness plan. About 9 million people are in income-based repayment plans that allow them to make minimal loan payments that don't even cover accruing interest on their underlying debt.

So what is the solution to the train wreck we call the federal student-loan program? This is what Steve Rhode recommends:

I hate to state the obvious here, but rather than worry about the inequities of forgiveness and who wins and loses, the most rational and logical option is to roll back the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA).

It was this pernicious law that made even private student loans virtually nondischargeable in bankruptcy.  Many of the congresspeople who voted for this bill still hold elected office. They should be ashamed of themselves. 

Just as importantly, Mr. Rhode argues, Congress needs to remove the "undue hardship" language from the Bankruptcy Code and allow distressed debtors to discharge their college loans in bankruptcy like any other consumer debt.

Steve Rhode succinctly points out the merits of reasonable bankruptcy relief:

Returning to allowing both federal and private student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy has many features:

1.      It is a current and accepted legal process with clear rules and guidelines. 

2.      The debt is forgiven tax-free. 

3.      It allows people a chance to get a fresh start from an impossible situation. Oftentimes these issues are the result of accidents, injuries, medical issues, pandemics, etc. 

4.      A bankruptcy Trustee and Judge must review and approve the discharge plan. If a consumer has too much income for a full immediate discharge, they will be required to enter a five-year repayment plan in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. 

5.      Forgiveness will be restricted to only those that qualify. 

6.      The fact the loans may now be dischargeable should force lenders to make better loan decisions before just handing the money to anybody. 

7.      If loans are less abundant or actually just based on repayment ability, then schools would have to ratchet back tuition fees. Less easy money would be available. 

8.      This process would be restricted to those who need and meet the accepted legal standards for bankruptcy. 

9.      People that can afford to repay their loans will have to do so through their Chapter 13 repayment plan.

10.  We can eliminate this ridiculous game and administration of student loans that will never be repaid and have to be dealt with.

As I said at the beginning of this commentary, I urge people to read Steve Rhode's article in its entirety. I agree with him completely.

Let's see what Congress does in the coming months. The way out of the nightmare is to amend the Bankruptcy Code.  Various student-loan forgiveness scenarios will not fix this enormous problem. 

If loan forgiveness is the best idea Congress has to offer, then our nation's political leaders will have opted for the status quo. And the status quo will ultimately destroy our nation's colleges and universities along with the lives of millions of student-loan debtors. 

If You Have Problem Debt and Student Loans – Do Not Vote for Trump--Essay by Steve Rhode

 

Written by Steve Rhode

The 2016 election is a cantankerous event. What surprises me most are the people that want to decide who to vote for based on what they see on social media or one political learning media outlet.

Strictly speaking from a consumer debt point of view, who to vote for isn’t even close.

And frankly, if you care about creditors being responsible for abusing consumers or you are drowning under student loan debt then there is only one candidate to vote for.

Under Trump--Student Loans

The DeVos Department of Education has gone out of its way to punish student loan debtors at every opportunity. In fact, the level of aggressiveness by the Department has made it look like they want to punish all debtors and go back on the word of the government to help people to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Abusive Schools – The Department has removed or eliminated rules that require schools to be responsible for abusive practices and fraud that let to enrolling students who are then on the hook for federal student loans.

The Department of Education all but stopped processing valid claims for the elimination of federal student loans under the government policy that is known as the Borrower Defense to Repayment.

Student Loan Servicers

Student loan servicers have been allowed to give debtors poor advice, bad advice, or self-serving advice with little consequences. The Department has asserted that States can’t go after student loan servicers for abusive and deceptive practices. Since the servicers are acting on behalf of the federal government.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness

The first wave of debtors eligible to have their student loans forgiven under the President Bush initiated the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which came due under the current Department of Education.

Secretary DeVos has done a lot to prevent people from getting the promised forgiveness. Roadblocks and hurdles have been artificially created to prevent people from getting the forgiveness they worked towards for ten years. One of the more ridiculous measures was the position that even though a person is eligible for loan forgiveness after 120 payments, it was stated the person must continue in eligible employment for however long afterward it takes for the Department to review the application for forgiveness. Given the current delays, that could be a year or more stuck in a lower-paying job.

Another person ran into an issue where they made the payment the monthly statement from the loan servicer said to make and it was found the servicer statement was off by less than a dollar so none of the 120 payments were eligible to be counted towards forgiveness.

You can see the crazy things the Department has done in these past posts.

Sliding Scale Forgiveness

Even when a school was found to be fraudulent or deceptive and the Department of Education was supposed to forgive the debt, the Department came up with an arbitrary sliding scale of forgiveness that left students harmed by the school, to hold a life of debt. And these are for schools that the courts determined were fraudulent scams. The previous position of the Department of Education was to grant full forgiveness.

Bankruptcy Discharge for Federal Student Loans

The Department of Education has fought bankruptcy discharge for debtors that are clearly in hardship and distress. Even though they have a policy to not do this.

Instead, the current administration has wanted people to enroll in Income-Driven repayment plans that will never repay the debt but make it continue to grow. For more articles on this, see these posts.

A Bankruptcy Judge even said the lifetime of unpayable student loans creates a prison of emotional confinement. While students are left to struggle the schools that enrolled them face little to no consequences for putting the student in federal student loan debt.

The Judge said, “It is this Court’s opinion that many consumer bankruptcies are filed by desperate individuals who are financially, emotionally, and physically exhausted. Sometimes lost in the discussion that the bankruptcy discharge provides a fresh start to honest but unfortunate debtors is that, perhaps as importantly, it provides a commensurate benefit to society and the economy. People are freed from emotional and financial burdens to become more energetic, healthy participants.”

CFPB

Through the Trump presidency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been under assault to gut their abilities, power, and protection of consumers. Efforts had been put forward to restrict the protection of consumers.

For example, the CFPB terminated the consumer advisory board members and then made meetings secret.

The CFPB Financial Law Taskforce claimed “to have established the Taskforce to obtain recommendations about how to improve and strengthen consumer financial laws and regulations. The Taskforce’s objective therefore goes to the heart of the Bureau’s mission—and positions the Taskforce to provide a blueprint for the CFPB to revise the laws that protect financial consumers across the United States.” – Source

“None of the selected Taskforce members has a background advocating for consumers, nor does any appear to believe that the CFPB should vigorously protect consumers from dangerous and confusing financial products.”

The meetings led by creditor representatives are closed and secret. Who knows what is going on.

Trump: F-

If you want to see people go further in debt, live lives of student loan financial slavery, and have fewer protections against the interest of creditors and banks, vote Trump.

Biden

Since former Vice President Biden is not currently in office, I have to turn to what his policies state.

Student Loans

• Stop for-profit education programs from profiteering off of students. Students who started their education at for-profit colleges default on their student loans at a rate three times higher than those who start at non-profit colleges. These for-profit programs are often predatory – devoted to high-pressure and misleading recruiting practices and charging higher costs for lower quality education that leaves graduates with mountains of debt and without good job opportunities. The Biden Administration will require for-profits to first prove their value to the U.S. Department of Education before gaining eligibility for federal aid.

• The Biden Administration will also return to the Obama-Biden Borrower’s Defense Rule, forgiving the debt held by individuals who were deceived by the worst for-profit college or career profiteers.

  Finally, President Biden will enact legislation eliminating the so-called 90/10 loophole that gives for-profit schools an incentive to enroll veterans and servicemembers in programs that aren’t delivering results.

• 
  

• Crack down on private lenders profiteering off of students and allow individuals holding private loans to discharge them in bankruptcy. In 2015, the Obama-Biden Administration called for Congress to pass a law permitting the discharge of private student loans in bankruptcy. As president, Biden will enact this legislation. In addition, the Biden Administration will empower the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – established during the Obama-Biden Administration – to take action against private lenders who are misleading students about their options and do not provide an affordable payment plan when individuals are experiencing acute periods of financial hardship. – Source

More than halve payments on undergraduate federal student loans by simplifying and increasing the generosity of today’s income-based repayment program. Under the Biden plan, individuals making $25,000 or less per year will not owe any payments on their undergraduate federal student loans and also won’t accrue any interest on those loans. Everyone else will pay 5% of their discretionary income (income minus taxes and essential spending like housing and food) over $25,000 toward their loans. This plan will save millions of Americans thousands of dollars a year. After 20 years, the remainder of the loans for people who have responsibly made payments through the program will be 100% forgiven. Individuals with new and existing loans will all be automatically enrolled in the income-based repayment program, with the opportunity to opt out if they wish. In addition to relieving some of the burden of student debt, this will enable graduates to pursue careers in public service and other fields without high levels of compensation. Biden will also change the tax code so that debt forgiven through the income-based repayment plan won’t be taxed. Americans shouldn’t have to take out a loan to pay their taxes when they finally are free from their student loans.

Affordable Education

For too many, earning a degree or other credential after high school is unaffordable today. For others, their education saddles them with so much debt it prevents them from buying a home or saving for retirement, or their parents or grandparents take on some of the financial burden.

• Providing two years of community college or other high-quality training program without debt for any hard-working individual looking to learn and improve their skills to keep up with the changing nature of work.
• Creating a new grant program to assist community colleges in improving their students’ success.
• Tackling the barriers that prevent students from completing their community college degree or training credential.
• Invest in community college facilities and technology.

We have a student debt crisis in this country, with roughly more than 44 million American individuals now holding a total of $1.5 trillion in student loans. One in five adults who hold student loans are behind on payments, a disproportionate number of whom are black. Thus, student debt both exacerbates and results from the racial wealth gap.

This challenge is also intergenerational. Almost one in ten Americans in their 40s and 50s still hold student loan debt. But, college debt has especially impacted Millennials who pursued educational opportunities during the height of the Great Recession and now struggle to pay down their student loans instead of buying a house, opening their own business, or setting money aside for retirement.

There are several drivers of this problem. The cost of higher education has skyrocketed, roughly doubling since the mid-1990s. States have dramatically decreased investments in higher education, leaving students and their families with the bill. And, too often individuals have been swindled into paying for credentials that don’t provide value to graduates in the job market. As president, Biden will address all of these challenges.

Biden’s plan to make two years of community college without debt will immediately offer individuals a way to become work-ready with a two-year degree or an industry certification. It will also halve their tuition costs for obtaining a four-year degree, by earning an associate’s degree and then transferring those credits to a four-year college or university. And, as a federal-state partnership, it will ensure states both invest in community colleges and give states some flexibility to also invest in college readiness or affordability at four-year institutions.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness

Make loan forgiveness work for public servants. Public servants do the hard work that is essential to our country’s success – protecting us, teaching our children, keeping our streets clean and our lights on, and so much more. But the program designed to help these individuals serve without having to worry about the burden of their student loans – the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program – is broken. Biden will create a new, simple program which offers $10,000 of undergraduate or graduate student debt relief for every year of national or community service, up to five years. Individuals working in schools, government, and other non-profit settings will be automatically enrolled in this forgiveness program; up to five years of prior national or community service will also qualify. Additionally, Biden will fix the existing Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by securing passage of the What You Can Do For Your Country Act of 2019. Biden will ensure adjunct professors are eligible for this loan forgiveness, depending on the amount of time devoted to teaching. – Source

I would expect a Biden Department of Education to honor the promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness for people under the past program.

Bankruptcy

• Make it easier for people being crushed by debt to obtain relief through bankruptcy.
• Expand people’s rights to take care of themselves and their children while they are in the bankruptcy process.
• End the absurd rules that make it nearly impossible to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy.
• Let more people protect their homes and cars in bankruptcy so they can start from a firm foundation when they start to pick up the pieces and rebuild their financial lives.
• Help address shameful racial and gender disparities that plague our bankruptcy system.
• Close loopholes that allow the wealthy and corporate creditors to abuse the bankruptcy system at the expense of everyone else. – Source

Biden: You Give Him the Grade

So if student loan debt and consumer protections are important to you and if facts matter, then I welcome you to make your own informed decision based on the information above. But given what the positions and policies are, clearly, Biden would be the logical choice if these issues matter to you.

But here is the bottom line, if you vote for Trump, don’t complain later when your student loan servicer lies to you, your loans aren’t dealt with as promised, and you find yourself stuck in a life of debt without consumer protections.

You get what you vote for.

******

Steve Rhode is the Get Out of Debt Guy and has been helping good people with bad debt problems since 1994. You can learn more about Steve, here.  You can read this essay on Mr. Rhode's web site at https://getoutofdebt.org/153979/if-you-have-problem-debt-and-student-loans-do-not-vote-for-this-candidate#respond.

One in four young Americans contemplated suicide in June: Will they feel better if they take out student loans and go to college?

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirms what Americans already know: The coronavirus pandemic is harmful to our mental health.  And young people are particularly vulnerable.

According to the CDC, one out of four Americans ages 18 through 24 contemplated suicide in June. The CDC's study did not break down that age group between college students and other young Americans. Still, everyone knows (often from personal experience) that going to college can be depressing.

Experts worry that the financial downturn will be hard on college budgets, forcing schools to cut back on counseling services for students.  But maybe not. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2018 that colleges have at least a limited duty to prevent their students from committing suicide. That decision is likely to prompt higher education to invest more resources in their students' mental health.

Personally, I think now might be the wrong time for young people to go to college. The job market is terrible, and no one knows for sure which industries will thrive after we conquer COVID-19. I think the financial turmoil will make it harder for undergraduates to pick a college major that will prepare them for a post-pandemic job.

The universities themselves are agitated by social unrest, with some institutions thinking about defunding their campus police.  Depending on how that goes, students may find themselves vulnerable to crime when they stroll across the quad on their way to Psychology 101.

And a college education has become incredibly expensive.  The National Center for Educational Statistics reported that tuition and expenses to attend a four-year college went from $5,504 a year in 1985-1986 to $$27,357 in 2017-2018 (in constant dollars). (My thanks to Steve Rhode for alerting me to those figures.)

That's a four-fold increase in college costs over 32 years. When prices are adjusted for inflation, the increase is less dramatic but not reassuring. Whose wages have kept up with inflation over the last 10 years? I know mine haven't.

If you are one of the millions of young people who graduated from high school and have no clue about what you are going to do for a living, don't take out student loans to find out. If you stumble into one of the flaky liberal arts or social studies majors (sociology, psychology, international relations, gender studies, etc.), you may well wind up with $50,000 or more in student debt and no idea how you will pay it back.

You think you are depressed now, how will you feel when your first student loan payment comes due?

If you decide to go to college anyway, do what you can to reduce the risk of depression. If you've read anything by J.D. Salinger, forget it and throw his books away. By writing Catcher in the Rye, Salinger has done more to depress young people than anyone with the possible exception of Bob Dylan.

U.S.. should run a "blue light special" on bankruptcies for consumers and student-loan debtors

As a young man, I practiced law in a three-man law firm in Anchorage, Alaska. In the winter months, the firm occasionally experienced lean times when clients couldn't pay their bills.

But we three were young, optimistic, and confident. I remember one day during an especially lean winter month when our senior partner jokingly announced: "Gentlemen, it's time to introduce our Blue Light Special: Bankruptcy, name change, and a divorce for only $500!"

I have always been a firm believer in bankruptcy--a process that allows "poor but honest debtors" to get a "fresh start." Although few people know it, bankruptcy is enshrined in our Constitution, and the bankruptcy courts are the main reason why America doesn't have debtors prisons.

I never had to file for bankruptcy myself, but several of my law firm's clients did in the mid-1980s when Alaska experienced a real-life depression due to a steep downturn in oil prices.  These people wiped the slate clean of all their financial misfortunes and started over.

Today, millions of once-middle-class Americans are experiencing severe financial stress. As Steve Rhode recently reported in Get Out of Debt Guy, the economy is running on borrowed time.  Mortgage delinquencies are up, with Miami and New York City leading the way.  People are fleeing the big cities. According to the New York Times, five percent of NYC's population left the town over two months this spring--frightened by the coronavirus, soaring crime rates, and a deteriorating economy.

So far, our government has kept the wolves at bay by pumping trillions of dollars into the economy through Payroll Protection loans and enhanced unemployment compensation. Millions of student debtors have stopped making monthly payments on their loans, but the Department of Education granted a temporary forbearance that allows distressed college-loan borrowers to skip payments for a few months.

But significant sectors of our economy are going to come crashing down within the next twelve months. For middle-class families who are being swept up in this tidal wave of economic isolation, bankruptcy is their only hope of regrouping.

Unfortunately, Congress revised the Bankruptcy Code in 2005 at the behest of the banks. The nation's large financial institutions were worried about people shedding their credit-card debt in the bankruptcy courts.  The banks wanted to make consumer debt more difficult to discharge in bankruptcy, and Congress obliged.

The revised Code also made it almost impossible for debtors to discharge their private student loans. Under the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act, private student loans are nondischargeable unless the debtor can show "undue hardship," a term the federal courts have interpreted harshly. And, as we all know, that brutal standard also applies to federal student loans.

The corporate world has ready access to bankruptcy, and the federal bankruptcy courts have become a playground for big business.  But the little guys are not treated so kindly.

As the 2020 election season rolls along, we should all think about what it is we want our elected politicians to do.  Number one, in my opinion, is a revision of the Bankruptcy Code. We will never recover as a nation from the financial calamity that is bearing down on us unless working people and student debtors can get a fresh start--the fresh start that the bankruptcy courts were created to provide.

Three moves equal one fire: In these troubled times, shelter should be the first priority.

In the early 20th century, a lot of Americans in the rural South were tenant farmers; and they often moved from farm to farm to remain employed. "Three moves are as bad as a fire," was a common observation because the disruption, property loss, and cost of moving could be devastating. Three such moves caused as much damage as one fire.

According to the Aspen Institute, as reported by Steve Rhode, "One in five of the 110 million Americans who live in renter households are at risk of eviction by September." Most of these people live in urban areas, but the trauma and loss caused by eviction are just as devastating for them as for the Southern tenant farmers who lost their homes a hundred years ago.

Being evicted often means that parents have to pull their children out of school in midyear, which disrupts their kids' education. Renting another apartment usually requires the new tenant to come up with a security deposit, which may be impossible for people who have no savings and no credit cards. Moving to a new apartment also means having to open a new account for electricity and water, and often the utility companies require a deposit.

Three moves equal one fire in modern America. And people who can't scramble successfully from one rented apartment to another become homeless.

Our federal government has distributed massive infusions of cash into the American economy to offset the economic calamity caused by COVID-19. Still, a lot of that money went to people who don't need it. More than 600,000 businesses benefited from the Payroll Protection Program, including 1,400 investment advisors.

Poor people, on the other hand, have received scant relief.  The government mailed out  $1,200 one-time checks a few months ago, but that amount may not cover a month's rent.  Congress fattened people's unemployment checks by $600 a month--a significant benefit, to be sure, but this aid is temporary.

We already see the disruption in housing caused by the coronavirus. The number of adults living with their parents has spiked upward to 24.8 million, with the most significant increases among people in their early twenties.  Sixty percent of young Black men are living with their parents or grandparents.

Matthew Desmond called for radical changes in housing policy in his 2016 book titled Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. He argues for universal housing vouchers to guarantee that every American would live in a home that is "decent, modest, and fairly priced."

In the short term, I don't see significant changes in national housing policy.  But this much seems clear. The federal government needs to devote a substantial amount of its coronavirus-relief money to making sure unemployed, and low-income Americans can stay in their rented homes.

Shanty housing during the Great Depression

HEROES bill dishes out thin gruel for student-loan debtors: "Please, sir, I want some more."

In its original form, the HEROES bill was 1,800 pages long; and I am grateful to Steve Rhode of Get Out of Debt Guy for summarizing its essential elements.  The original legislation provided up to $10,000 in student-loan relief for borrowers holding federal or private loans.

By the time the House of Representatives approved the HEROES Act in mid-May, relief for student debtors was watered down considerably. As Mark Kantrowitz reported, the bill that was approved by the House limits relief to "economically distressed borrowers."

Who are the economically distressed borrowers? Mostly these benefits will go to people who are:

• in default on their loans or whose monthly payments are more than 90 days overdue,
• People with economic hardship deferments, cancer treatment deferments, or unemployment deferments,
• People whose loans are in forbearance and whose debt burden exceeds 20 percent of the borrower's income.

The HEROES Act was thin gruel when it was first introduced, but the gruel got even thinner by the time the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 208 to 199.

Forty-five million Americans are burdened with federal student loans totaling $1.6 trillion, and private-loan borrowers owe about 125 billion. That's a lot of debt, and the HEROES Act offers only a few crumbs of relief.

Assuming the Senate approves the HEROES Act in its present form (which is not likely), most of this money will do nothing more than pay down the interest on borrowers' student-loan balances. People in income-driven repayment plans are seeing their debt grow larger with each passing month due to accruing interest. People whose student loans are in deferment or forbearance are not making their monthly loan payments, but interest is accruing on their loan balances as well.

In short, the HEROES Act is an insult to the millions of people who are being dragged down by unmanageable student loans. Like Oliver Twist, all 45 million student-loan borrowers should shout, "Please, sir, I want some more."

Please, sir, I want some more.

President Trump waives interest on student loans "until further notice": Woefully inadequate relief for distressed student-loan borrowers

In yesterday's speech on the coronavirus crisis, President Trump announced he is temporarily waiving interest on all federal student loans.

"I've waived interest on all student loans held by federal government agencies ... until further notice," Trump said in his speech "That's a big thing for a lot of students that are left in the middle right now. Many of those schools have been closed."

I appreciate President Trump's effort to assist distressed student borrowers, but yesterday's action is totally inadequate.  Millions of distressed student borrowers need broad and immediate relief, and a temporary waiver of interest offers almost no help at all. 

Around 45 million Americans have outstanding student loans totaling $1.6 trillion.  For many college-loan debtors, interest has already accrued, causing their loan balances to double, triple, and even quadruple.  Temporarily waiving interest on that debt is almost meaningless.

Besides, I think President Trump may have overestimated the Department of Education's ability to implement his moratorium.  Adjusting interest costs for 45 million student borrowers is no small task. Many student debtors have more than one student loan, and these loans have varying interest rates. (In fact, I met a woman yesterday who has five separate student loans.)We're probably talking about interest adjustments on more than 100 million individual loan agreements.

Frankly, I don't think Betsy DeVos's DOE is up to the job. DOE completely botched the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, denying 99 percent of the applications for PSLF debt relief. Last year, a federal judge ruled that DOE had managed the program arbitrarily and capriciously and in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Also last year, a California federal judge held Secretary DeVos and DOE in contempt for not abiding by the judge's order to stop trying to collect on student loans taken out by people who had attended schools operated by the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges. I don't think DeVos and her crew intentionally disregarded the judge's order. I think they simply don't know what they are doing.

If DOE cannot manage its routine responsibilities, how can it manage adjustments on student loans held by 45 million people?

As Steve Rhode wrote a few days ago, "People in denial about the impact of COVID-19 may be adequately protected with emergency savings, good health insurance, and paid time off of work. But those of us who work in hourly paid jobs are at a very high risk of having finances slaughtered by this virus."

Mr. Rhode's observation is particularly applicable to college students and former college students.  A lot of people with substantial student-loan burdens are working in temporary jobs that pay low wages. In the coming weeks, these jobs are going to be lost as the public stops eating out, shopping, and traveling. The people who held these lost jobs are going to be unable to service their student loans, and many of them will default.

Giving overburdened student debtors a temporary break from the interest on their loans is like putting a bandaid on a compound fracture (a hackneyed analogy, I admit).  President Trump and Congress need to take far more drastic action.

Specifically, Congress must revise the Bankruptcy Code to allow insolvent student-loan debtors to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy.  

Ultimately, our politicians will be forced to confront the fact that the student-loan program is a colossal disaster, and the coronavirus epidemic is going to make it worse. Now is a good time to do what needs to be done. And what needs to be done is bankruptcy reform.

Why doesn't Congress do something useful to relieve the student-loan crisis? A couple of modest suggestions

Some famous guy once said that people are prone to see the speck in another person's eye while ignoring the log in their own eye. That observation reminds of our national political scene--nothing but vitriol and no good being done.

But there are several things Congress can do--uncontroversial things in my opinion, which would help relieve the massive student-loan crisis.  For example, Steve Rhode recently wrote an essay on a new California law that requires colleges to give students their transcripts--including students who have unpaid debts to their college.

As Mr. Rhode quoted, the new law (AB-1313) states: "Schools and colleges have threatened to withhold transcripts from students as a debt collection tactic. The practice can cause severe hardship by preventing students from pursuing educational and career opportunities, and it is therefore unfair and contrary to public policy." Does anyone in Congress disagree with that statement?

The law's dictate is quite simple:

Whenever a student transfers from one community college or public or private institution of postsecondary education to another within the state, appropriate records or a copy thereof shall be transferred by the former community college, or college or university upon a request from the student.

Withholding transcripts and diplomas because a former student is indebted to the college is a common practice among the for-profit institutions, which prompts an obvious question. Why are colleges lending money to students in the first place?

There are two answers to that questions. Some for-profit colleges are not content simply to suck up Pell Grant money and federal student-loan money. They want more cash, and many have no qualms about forcing their students to take out loans--often at high interest rates--in order to continue with their studies.

Second, many for-profits have trouble meeting the Fed's 90/10 rule, which requires a for-profit college to receive no more than 90 percent of its operating revenues from federal student-aid money.  One strategy for getting the 10 percent of auxiliary funding that they need is to loan their students money.

California passed a sensible law, and Congress should adopt it so that the law's restrictions apply nationwide. I repeat--does any person in Congress disagree with what the California legislature did?

Just this morning, Steve Rhode  responded to a a man who claimed that his entire Social Security check was garnished by some outfit called Account Control Technology due to an unpaid student-loan debt. As Mr. Rhode pointed out, the Internal Revenue Service cannot deduct more than 15 percent of an individual's Social Security check as a garnishment. So there is a screw-up somewhere for this individual to lose his entire Social Security check.

But why should elderly Americans have any of their Social Security checks garnished due to unpaid student loans? As the General Accountability Office reported some time ago, these garnishments almost always go toward paying accumulated interest and penalties; and the sums collected do nothing to actually pay down the underlying debt. So what's the damn point?

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Clair McCaskill introduced a bill a few years ago to stop the practice of garnishing Social Security checks to collect on defaulted student loans, but the bill went nowhere. Why can't Congress get off its fat ass and pass that bill?

Student Loan Assistance Companies on Notice Now for Inflating Repayment Plans to Get $0 Payments: Essay by Steve Rhode

Written by Steve Rhode (originally published in Get Out of Debt Guy on July 26, 2019)

A long implemented trick by some student loan assistance companies has been to tell consumers they can inflate the number of people they support in order to reduce the monthly payment on Income-Drive Repayment (IDR) Plans.

Consumers have reported and I’ve covered stories where sales representatives of student loan assistance companies, sometimes pretending to be only “document preparation” companies, have said things like:

• If you give someone a ride to work you can count them as a dependent towards reducing your student loan payments.
• How many people regularly hang out at your house? You can count them as people you support.
• Do you have any roommates because you can count them as dependents?
• How many people do you buy presents for?

A brave inside tipster (send in your tips here) told me, “In order to make the sale, sales agents would falsely increase family sizes on government documents in order to deceptively get clients reduced or free monthly payments on their Federal student loan payments.”

Consumers fell for this false inflation of family size either out of blind faith the company they hired to lower their student loan payments actually knew what they were talking about, or they just wanted a lower payment.

The problem with this strategy is it is based entirely on a mountain of lies on a federal form. And the reality has always existed that either the government was going to ask for documentation before eventually forgiving loans in an IDR plan or monthly payments were going to explode when the actual proof was requested to verify family size.

Now imagine what will happen when the proof is demanded to support the IDR and you can only provide the required proof for three people and you’ve been claiming 15. Now there is a red flag.

The Jig is Up

Just recently the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) submitted a report titled – “Education Needs to Verify Borrowers’ Information for Income-Driven Repayment Plans.”

Here is what the GAO investigation found:

“GAO identified indicators of potential fraud or error in income and family size information for borrowers with approved Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans. IDR plans base monthly payments on a borrower’s income and family size, extend repayment periods from the standard 10 years to up to 25 years, and forgive remaining balances at the end of that period.

• Zero income. About 95,100 IDR plans were held by borrowers who reported zero income yet potentially earned enough wages to make monthly student loan payments. This analysis is based on wage data from the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), a federal dataset that contains quarterly wage data for newly hired and existing employees. According to GAO’s analysis, 34 percent of these plans were held by borrowers who had estimated annual wages of $45,000 or more, including some with estimated annual wages of $100,000 or more. Borrowers with these 95,100 IDR plans owed nearly $4 billion in outstanding Direct Loans as of September 2017.

• Family size. About 40,900 IDR plans were approved based on family sizes of nine or more, which were atypical for IDR plans. Almost 1,200 of these 40,900 plans were approved based on family sizes of 16 or more, including two plans for different borrowers that were approved using a family size of 93. Borrowers with atypical family sizes of nine or more owed almost $2.1 billion in outstanding Direct Loans as of September 2017.

These results indicate some borrowers may have misrepresented or erroneously reported their income or family size. Because income and family size are used to determine IDR monthly payments, fraud or errors in this information can result in the Department of Education (Education) losing thousands of dollars of loan repayments per borrower each year and potentially increasing the ultimate cost of loan forgiveness. Where appropriate, GAO is referring these results to Education for further investigation.”

And as hard as Education has pushed back on forgiving loans under the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, I can only imagine what will happen when these fraudulent IDR plans come up for forgiveness and are denied.

The consumers will be on the hook for the fraud and the student loan assistance and document preparation companies will be long gone.