Bernie Sanders wants to cancel $1.6 trillion in student debt: A bridge too far?

Senator Bernie Sanders is running for President a second time. Last week he made the news with his proposal to cancel all federal student-loan debt-- $1.6 trillion.  If Bernie makes good on this pledge, he will certainly make 45 million student-loan borrowers very happy.

Bernie also proposes to make a four-year college education tuition-free at public universities. If he can pull that off, millions of Americans will be delighted. A free college education! What's not to like?

I have supported student-loan reform for more than 20 years, and I applaud Senator Sanders for putting the student-loan crisis on the front burner of national politics. But in my view, Bernie's proposals may have gone a bridge too far.

First of all, the federal student loan program, which Congress inaugurated 50 years ago, has morphed into a giant Improvised Explosive Device (IUD). As we saw in the movie Hurt Locker, an IUD must be defused very carefully or it will blow up in our faces. No one really knows what the impact would be on the national fisc if the federal government were to write off $1.6 trillion in student-loan debt. Bernie says he will pay for this bonanza by taxing Wall Street, but that tax would fall heavily on retirees, who have most of their savings in mutual funds tied to the stock market.

Even if Bernie could cancel all student debt tomorrow, most students would still have to take out additional student loans to pay for their next semester's tuition, fees, and living expenses. Of course, Bernie's solution to that problem is to simply make a college education at a public institution tuition-free.

But let's think about Bernie's tuition-free college proposal for a moment. All public colleges receive some kind of financial support from the 50 individual states. Any plan for a tuition-free college education at a public institution must involve some coordination with 50 state governments. Is it realistic to think a Sanders administration could successfully negotiate with California, Illinois, New Jersey, and 47 other states to provide tuition-free college from sea to shining sea? I doubt it.

As for Bernie's proposal to forgive all student-loan debt, that notion seems unwise. Although it is true that millions of student-borrowers are unable to pay back their loans, some portion of the 45 million student debtors received fair value for their student-loan dollars. Do we really want to forgive student-loan debt taken out by people who attended Harvard Law School and landed high-paying jobs?

In my view, the best way to resolve the student-loan crisis is to reform the Bankruptcy Code and allow insolvent student-loan debtors to discharge their student loans through bankruptcy. People who took out student loans in good faith and cannot pay them back should get relief from their debts like any other insolvent debtor.

After all, the bankruptcy judges have the expertise and experience to determine who is entitled to bankruptcy relief from their student loans. All that needs to be done is simply to strike the "undue hardship" clause from the Bankruptcy Code.

In fact, Senator Sanders and several other presidential aspirants in Congress are co-sponsoring just such a bill. Titled the Student Borrower Bankruptcy Relief Act of 2019,  the bill has been filed in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Rather than forgive $1.6 trillion in student debt in one fell swoop, Congress needs to pass this bill so that distressed student-loan debtors can obtain relief in bankruptcy.

Bernie Sanders: We can have our cake and eat it too!

Student Borrowers Beware: Joe Biden is a Lackey of the Banks

Fourteen years ago, Congress passed a so-called bankruptcy reform law at the behest of the banking industry. One provision--inserted solely for the benefit of the banks—made private student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy unless the debtor could show “undue hardship.” The banks justified this heartless legislation as a way to reduce interest rates on private student loans. They argued that the additional protection for creditors would make it possible for banks to loan students money at a lower interest rate because defaulting borrowers would find it virtually impossible to discharge their private college loans in the bankruptcy courts.

This legislation benefited Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo and other major players in the private student-loan market, but the U.S. Department of Education issued a report in 2015 arguing that this provision should be repealed.

This is what the DOE report had to say:

There has been no evidence that the 2005 changes to bankruptcy caused interest on student loans to decline or access to credit to increase significantly. As private student loans generally do not include the consumer protections, such as income-driven repayment plans, included in federal loans, the undue-hardship standard for bankruptcy discharge leaves private student loan borrowers in financial distress with few options.

According to an article in International Business Times (IBT), Senator Joe Biden was an enthusiastic supporter of this Fat Cat Assistance Act, which made it harder for insolvent student-loan debtors to obtain bankruptcy relief. As IBT’s David Sirota observed:

Though the vice president has long portrayed himself as a champion of the struggling middle class--a man who famously commutes on Amtrack and mixes enthusiastically with blue-collar workers—the Delaware lawmaker has played a consistent and pivotal role in the financial industry’s four-decade campaign to make it harder for students to shield themselves and their families from creditors, according to an IBT review of bankruptcy legislation going back to the 1970s.

Indeed, Ed Boltz, who was president of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2015, observed that “Joe Biden bears a large amount of responsibility for passage of the bankruptcy bill.” In fact, the New York Times reported that Biden voted for the bill four times: in 1998, 2000, 2001, and in March 2005, when the bill finally passed the Senate by a vote of 74 to 25.

And—surprise, surprise!—as of 2015, the financial industry had donated $1.9 million to Biden over the course of his career. Now Joe is launching another campaign for the presidency.

So if you get an opportunity to vote for Joe Biden, keep this mind: he is a lackey of the banks. And if you are a student-loan debtor who supports Mr. Biden's presidential bid, then you are an idiot.

References

Christopher Drew & Mike McIntire. Obama Aides Defend Bank’s Pay to Biden Son. New York Times, August 24, 2008.

David Sirota. Joe Biden Backed Bills to Make It Harder for Americans to Reduce Their Student Debt. International Business Times, September 15, 2015.

U.S. Department of Education. Strengthening the Student Loan System to Better Protect All Borrowers. Washington D.C., October 1, 2015. [Note: This DOE report has been removed from the web.]

Dude! Don't move to India to escape student loans!

Zero Hedge posted an article yesterday about people who fled the United States to escape their student loans. (Annie Nova wrote the original story for CNBC).  Chad Haag, for example, graduated from the University of Northern Colorado and emigrated to India to get away from $20,000 in college-loan debt.

Apparently, Haag is somewhat ambivalent about India. He gets to see elephants--a plus.  But Haag is not crazy about the plumbing. "Some toilets here are holes in the ground you squat over," he confided.

Zero Hedge went on to report on a woman who went to Japan to teach English and a guy who moved to China--also to teach English. Both said they were partly motivated to leave the U.S. by their student-loan debt.

Dudes! Don't move overseas to dodge your student loans. People who cannot find good jobs can enroll in one of the Department of Education's income-based repayment plans (IBRPs). If they are unemployed or living below the poverty line, their monthly loan payment will be zero. An IBRP is a terrible option, as I have often said. But for most people, it beats moving to Asia.

Frankly, I'm not buying the underlying premise of this story. Millions of people have defaulted on their student loans and hardly any of them have left the U.S.  Why would they? People can't dodge their student loans by moving overseas. The debt will be waiting for them when they return, along with accumulated interest and penalties.

My guess is that student-loan debtors who leave the United States have multiple motives. Mr. Haag, for example, married an Indian national, which must be the major reason he is living in a country that doesn't meet his hygiene standards. And thousands of people teach English overseas simply to experience another culture.

If we are looking for signs of suffering, we shouldn't focus on a handful of people who have left the country with student loans hanging over their heads. We should reflect on plummeting birth rates, declining homeownership, and inadequate savings for retirement.

The student-loan program is a catastrophe but publicizing a few outliers is a distraction. We need to relieve the suffering experienced by millions of people. In my mind that can best be accomplished in the bankruptcy courts. And then we need to find a better way to finance higher education.

How Can I Get Out of the Student Loan I Cosigned for My Son? Advice from Steve Rhode, the Get Out of Debt Guy

If you are thinking about taking out a Parent PLUS loan to finance your child's college education or co-signing a relative's loan, you should read Steve Rhode's essay, first published at Get Out of Debt Guy, a consumer counseling web site.

Question:

Dear Steve,

It took my son 6 years to get a BA degree. By the 5th year, I ran out of money so I co-signed a private loan for him. For the past 4-5 years, I pay on this loan diligently every month because he refuses to the pay the loan or give me anything towards the payment and I don’t want to jeopardize my credit.

The original loan amt was 34K it is now only down to 29K because the interest rate keeps going up ..now it is at 7.75%. Additionally, he refuses to re-finance the loan

How can I get out from under the responsibility of his debt without jeopardizing my credit?

Sue

Answer:

Dear Sue,

Your son is being kind of a jerk. You helped him finish school and he can at least make some payment, even if he can’t pay it all each month.

Unfortunately, when you cosigned the loan you agreed to be 100% responsible for the loan. There is nothing good in cosigning if you are the one signing. My universal law of cosigning is don’t do it.

If you don’t want to ding your credit then you either need to pay the loan off in full or keep making at least the minimum monthly payment.

If you wanted to remove your liability for the debt you can do that but it will have a credit impact. Some of those options include filing bankruptcy or paying less than you owe on the balance as a settlement. However, you will need to go delinquent to settle it and the balance forgiven may be reported as a bad debt and be taxable.

The only way to make this situation different without harming your credit or costing you a big chunk of change would be to go back in time to the minute before you cosigned for him.

*******

Steve Rhode is the Get Out of Debt Guy and has been helping good people with bad debt problems since 1994. 

Brookings Institution researcher criticizes federal student-loan program: "It is an outrage"

Last month, Adam Looney of the Brookings Institution released a paper that is chock full of ideas for fixing the federal student-loan program. Looney began his paper with a withering condemnation of the program in its present form, which he accurately described as an outrage. I am quoting his critique verbatim, just putting his words into a bullet-style format:

• "It is an outrage that the federal government offers loans to students at low-quality institutions even when we know those schools don't boost their earnings and that those borrowers won't be able to repay their loans."

• It is an outrage that we make parent PLUS loans to the poorest families when we know they almost surely will default and have their wages and social security benefits garnished and their tax refunds confiscated . . ."

• "It is an outrage that we saddled several million students with loans to enroll in untested online programs, that seem to have offered no labor market value."

• It is an outrage that our lending programs encourage schools like USC to charge $107,484 . . . for a master's degree in social work (220 percent more than the equivalent course at UCLA) in a field where the median wage is $47,980."

All these failures, Looney charges, "are entirely the result of federal government policies." 

Nevertheless, for all its faults, Looney thinks the federal student loan program is worth fixing, and he makes several interesting reform proposals:

First, Looney recommends a cap on loans to graduate students. Currently, graduate students in the Grad PLUS program can take out student loans to pay the entire cost of their studies, no matter what the cost, which is nuts. 

This "sky is the limit" loan policy has led to the escalating cost of getting an MBA or law degree. In fact, the American Bar Association estimates that the average student at a private law school takes out  $122,000 in student loans. 

Second, Looney recommends applying an "ability-to-pay" standard to parent loans or eliminating them altogether. In my view, the Parent PLUS program should be shut down. It is insane to lure parents into financing their children's college education by taking on massive student-loan debt--debt which is almost impossible to discharge in bankruptcy.

Third, Looney recommends the REPAYE program as the default student-loan repayment plan for all students. Unless a student opts out, all student-loan borrowers would be automatically enrolled in the REPAYE program when they begin repaying their student loans.

REPAYE, introduced by the Obama administration, allows student debtors to pay 10 percent of the discretionary income (income minus 150 percent of the poverty level) for 20 years rather than attempt to pay off their loans in the standard 10-year repayment plan.

In conjunction with automatic REPAY enrollment, Looney calls for voiding all fees, capitalized interest, and collection costs on current borrowers--costs and fees they wouldn't have suffered if they had been automatically enrolled in REPAYE. In addition, he proposes to cancel all student-loan debt that is 20 years old or older--without regard to the status of these loans.

Finally, Looney calls for a halt in wage and Social Security garnishment, and an end to the Treasury Offset program--the program that allows the government to capture defaulted borrowers' tax refunds.

These are all good proposals, but I have reservations. First, is it good public policy to automatically enroll all student-loan debtors in REPAYE--a 20-year income-based repayment plan? If we go that route, we will be creating a massive class of indentured servants who will be paying a percentage of their income to the government for the majority of their working lives.

Moreover, most people in those plans will never pay back the principal on their loans and could wind up with huge amounts of forgiven debt after 20 years, which would be taxable to them as income.

Secondly, Looney's proposals--all good, as I have said--are complicated, and the Department of Education has a dismal record managing just about every aspect of the student-loan program. For example, individuals enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program have been applying for debt relief, and the Department of Education has rejected 99 percent of all claims.

So these are my revisions to Mr. Looney's proposals:

• Amend the Bankruptcy Code to allow distressed student-loan debtors to discharge their student loans in bankruptcy like any other consumer debt.

• Shut down the Parent PLUS program immediately, and allow parents who took out Parent PLUS loans or cosigned private loans for their children to discharge those loans in bankruptcy.

• Stop funding the venal and corrupt for-profit college industry (as Senator Elizabeth Warren recommends).

• Finally (and this is basically Mr. Looney's proposal) wipe out all penalties, fees, and capitalized interest for all 45 million student-loan borrowers and stop garnishing wages, tax refunds, and Social Security checks of student debtors in default.

My proposals, Mr. Looney's proposals, and for that matter, Senator Warren's debt-forgiveness proposal are shockingly expensive. Any policy that grants student-loan forgiveness to the millions of people who deserve it will cost billions--a quarter of a trillion dollars perhaps or even more.

But let's face facts. Millions of student borrowers are not paying back their loans under the present system. Indeed, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos acknowledged last November that only one debtor out of four is paying down principal and interest on student loans.

Let's admit that the student-loan program is a catastrophe, grant relief to its victims, and design a system of higher education that is not so hideously expensive.

Image credit: Quora.com

References

Adam Looney. A better way to provide relief to student loan borrowers. Brookings Institution, April 30, 2019.

Education Secretary Betsy Devos Hires Private Accounting Firm to Audit the Student Loan program: Asking For Bad News

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos hired McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, to audit the federal student loan program. Why did she do that?

After all, the Congressional Budget Office, the Government Accountability Office or the Inspector General could have done the job. Why hire a private firm?

I'm thinking Secretary DeVos and the Trump administration realize the federal student-loan program is under water. They know the news is bad, but they want to know just how bad it is. After all, Secretary DeVos compared the program to a looming thunderstorm in a speech she made last November.

It took 42 years, DeVos pointed out, for the federal student-loan portfolio to reach half a trillion dollars (1965 until 2007). It took only 6 years--2007 to 2013--for the portfolio to reach $1 trillion. And in 2018--just five years later--the federal government held $1.5 trillion in outstanding student loans. In fact, uncollateralized student loans now make up 30 percent of all federal assets.

This wouldn't be a problem if student borrowers were paying off their loans. But they're not. As DeVos candidly admitted last November, "only 24 percent of FSA borrowers—one in four—are currently paying down both principal and interest." One in five borrowers are in delinquency or default, and 43 percent of all loans are "in distress" (whatever that means).

Although DeVos did not say so explicitly, she basically acknowledged that we've arrived where we are because the government is cooking the books. Student loans now constitute one third of the federal balance sheet. "Only through government accounting is this student loan portfolio counted as anything but an asset embedded with significant risk" DeVos said. "In the commercial world, no bank regulator would allow this portfolio to be valued at full, face value."

We can hope that McKinsey and Company will give us an accurate accounting. But we already know the news will be catastrophic.  More than 7.4 million people are in income-based repayment plans (IBRPs) that stretch out for 20 and even 25 years. IBRP participants make loan payments based on their income, not the amount they borrowed. Virtually no one in these plans will ever pay off their loans. 

Millions more have their loans in deferment or are prolonging their education to postpone the day they will be obligated to start making loan payments. Thus--as DeVos disclosed--only a quarter of student-loan borrowers are paying back both principal and interest on their loans.

Over the past 15 years or so, presidential administrations have juggled the numbers to postpone the day of reckoning. "After us, the deluge," has been the watchword.  Meanwhile, university presidents are saying nothing about this looming thunderstorm. They hope the deluge won't come until they are drawing their pensions.

The McKinsey report, when it comes, will be a shock to the public consciousness. And there is only one solution. We must admit that the federal student-loan program is totally out of control and allow its victims to discharge their loans in bankruptcy.

Before the deluge: Photo Credit Yale Center for British Art

References

Michelle Hackman, Josh Mitchell, & Lalita Clozel. Trump Administration Hires McKinsey to Evaluate Student-Loan Portfolio. Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2019.

A Kansas bankruptcy judge grants Vicky Jo Metz a partial discharge of her student loans, and she wins her appeal

Vicky Jo Metz borrowed $16,613 back in the 1990s to attend a community college, but she never got a degree. Over the years, she filed for bankruptcy three times, but she continued making payments on her student loans under court-approved repayment plans. In fact, she paid almost 90 percent of what she originally borrowed.

Nevertheless, Metz's student-loan debt kept growing due to accruing interest. By 2018, her total debt had grown to $67,277--four times what she borrowed. 

In 2017, Metz commenced an adversary proceeding in a Kansas bankruptcy court, seeking to discharge her student loans. Her creditor, Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), objected to a discharge. Put Metz in an income-based repayment plan (IBRP), ECMC demanded. 

But Bankruptcy Judge Robert Nugent disagreed. Metz, who was 59 years old, would never pay off her student loans under an IBRP, Judge Nugent reasoned. On the contrary, if Metz entered a 25-year IBRP and faithfully made her income-based monthly payments, her debt would continue to grow due to accruing interest. By the time Metz completed her repayment plan, she would owe $157,277—nine times what she borrowed! Although her student-loan debt would be forgiven after 25 years of making payments, Metz would face significant tax liability because the IRS considers forgiven debt as taxable income.

 Judge Nugent granted Metz a partial discharge of her student loans. He canceled all the accrued interest on her student debt but required her to pay the original $16,613.

ECMC appealed Judge Nugent's decision to a federal district court, and Judge John Broomes upheld Judge Nugent's ruling. Like Judge Nugent, Judge Broomes applied the three-part Brunner test to determine whether it would be an undue hardship for Metz to repay her student loans.

In Judge Broomes' view, Metz could not repay her student loans and maintain a minimal standard of living. Thus, she met part one of the Brunner test. Moreover, she met part two of Brunner because her financial situation was not likely to change. Finally, in Judge Broomes’ view, Metz met part three of the Brunner test because she had handled her student loans in good faith.

In its appellant’s brief, ECMC renewed its argument that Metz should be placed in an IBRP and downplayed the tax consequences of such a plan. Metz would probably suffer no tax consequences from an IBRP, ECMC argued, because she would likely be flat broke when her IBRP concluded.  Under current law, ECMC pointed out, individuals pay no federal tax on forgiven debt if they are insolvent at the time the debt is forgiven.

In a footnote, Judge Broome pointed out the absurdity of ECMC’s position. “The import of that argument,” Judge Broome wrote, “is that under ECMC’s plan, [Metz] will be kept insolvent, if not entirely impoverished, until she is eighty years old and the debt is forgiven—what a pleasant system.”

Judge Broomes’ Metz decision is the second appellate court decision out of Kansas to uphold a bankruptcy court’s partial discharge of student-loan debt. The first decision, Murray v. ECMC, granted a partial discharge to Alan and Catherine Murray, a married couple in their late forties, whose student-loan debt had quadrupled over 20 years due to accruing interest.

Together, Metz and Murray stand for the proposition that long-term, income-based repayment plans are not appropriate for insolvent student-loan debtors when it is clear that debtors in these plans will never pay off their loans. Had ECMC had its way with Vicky Jo Metz, she would have made monthly student-loan payments for a quarter of a century—until she was in her eighties.  At that point, she would face a huge tax bill for $150,000 in forgiven debt or she would be insolvent. As Judge Broome remarked: What a pleasant system.

References

Educational Credit Management Corporation v. Metz, Case No. 18-1281-JWB (D. Kan. May 2, 2019).

In re Murray, 563 B.R. 52 (Bankr. D. Kan 2016); aff’d sub nom. Educational Credit Management Corporation v. Murray, No 16-2838, 2017 WL 4222980 (D. Kan. Sept. 22, 2017).