NOT ENOUGH BUT FAR FROM NOTHING

President Biden has finally come out with his plan to ease the weight of student loan debt perched on the shoulders of millions current and former students. Collectively, almost 50 million persons are on the hook for $1.75 in student loan debt, with study after study demonstrating that the relative weight of student loan debt falls particularly heavy on Blacks, Latinos, and women.

When you’ve got that kind of debt hanging over your head, it’s hard to do such things as purchase a home, upgrade your ride, build up generational wealth and, more generally, to get out of between that proverbial rock and a hard place. Combined with your other monthly obligations and stagnant wages, that student loan knot increases the probability that you’ll find yourself with more month than money. NOT ENOUGH BUT FAR FROM NOTHING

Will the Biden Plan (BP) have a measurable and substantial impact on the student loan crisis? Will it ease the burden of debt being carried by millions of persons or is it, as some have indicated, a massive nothing burger that leaves intact the student loan debt landscape?

Before we go any further, though, let me make some quick confessions. First, I am now—and have been for some time— committed to the building of a society where access to such basic goods as health, safe water, employment, and education are accessible to all. These, and other basic goods, are central to human flourishing. Without them, both individuals and the communities to which they belong experienced diminished livelihoods.

Second, I am convinced that Biden’s recently announced policy response to the student loan crisis is a significant step forward but still far short of a complete abolition of student loan debt. It is a policy that, if successfully implemented, will go a long way toward cleaning up the balance sheet of tens of millions of poor and working class debtors, while also leaving untouched large numbers of relatively high earners who owe big bucks in student loan debt.

Biden’s plan, in my estimation, is not enough but far from nothing.

KEY FEATURES OF BIDEN’S PLAN

To see why the Biden Plan is “not enough but far from nothing” consider, first of all, the Plan’s stipulations concerning who is eligible for debt forgiveness—and how much of that debt can be cleared off borrower’s balance sheets.

Unless you’ve been huddled up beneath a rock, you’ve probably heard about the income limits: The program is limited to individuals pulling in less than $125,000 per year or couples rocking no more than 250K. By the way, less than 20 percent (18.3%) of U.S. households pull in more than 150,000K per year. With regard to upper income households, then, Biden’s Plan does very little, if anything, to ease the student loan debt burden of the nation’s highest earners.

That’s an example of the “not enough” portion of the “not enough, far from nothing” framing of the Biden Plan.

But if you’re pockets are not fat enough to push you above the income limits for individuals ($125,000) and couples ($250,000), your eligible for up to $10,000 in debt cancelation, with an additional 10K possible for Pell Grant recipients. The Pell Grant, by the way, is a needs based form of Federal financial aid that, in most cases, do not have to be paid back.

10K-20K seems like a giant nothing burger when you take into account that the aggregate amount of student loan debt is somewhere in the vicinity of $1.7 trillion. It’s also not much for a person who’s rolling six figures deep in student loan debt. It’s on this basis that some have declared the Biden Plan as much ado about nothing. As lacking gravitas. As not being much of a flex.

But that’s a conclusion that takes flight from some important data. It’s only by ignoring important data that one can conclude or even suggest that the Plan is a big bust. The fact of the matter is that while the Plan falls far short of total abolition, it’s structure nevertheless results in literally tens of millions getting their slate wiped clean.

Don’t think so? Well, check this out:

• 33% of student loan borrowers owe less than $10,000

• 20% are on the hook for $10,000-$20,000

• 21% have to cough up between $20,000-$40,000

• 18% are on the hook for $40,000-$100,000

• 7% are in the red for more than $100,000

There’s 43.4 student loan borrowers and, as the above shows, more than half (53%) owe less than $20,000. Eliminating $10,000-$20,000 could potentially wipe the slate clean of 23 million persons (53% of 43.4 student borrowers). I’m all in for total abolition but it’s absolute nonsense to contend that there’s nothing of substance in the Biden Plan. You’re talking about tens of millions of persons who could end up having their student loan debt completely wiped out.

Tens. Of. Millions.

Many, if not most, of those millions are poor and working class folk and that’s also the group where “debt, but no degree” persons are disproportionately represented,

To categorically say or suggest that the Biden Plan yields no benefits might be rhetorically pleasing but it’s substantively vacuous. It has virtually nothing to offer high income households with large student loan debts and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a flaw. At the same time, if implemented, up to 23 million or so of our lower earning siblings might experience release from bondage to student loan debt. That’s a flex.

Personally, I’m elated that tens of millions of my siblings might be able to breathe a little easier. I’m glad that they’re getting a foretaste of what a debt jubilee might look life; I’m ecstatic that they might taste the fruits of a decades long struggle on the part of activists, academics, and partisans of economic and social justice to abolish student loan debt.

Tens of millions—over half of borrowers—being released from student loan debt is “far from nothing.”

But it’s not enough—at least if the goal is to abolish student loan debt for all borrowers. We have to double down and use this admittedly partial victory as fuel for the larger fight where everyone is guaranteed access to such public goods as universal health care and education.

In short, the Biden Plan—again— is “not enough but far from nothing.”