To: President Donald Trump
Solve the Student Debt Crisis
President Obama, your Income Based Repayment Plan allows some students to pay 10% of their discretionary income for 20 years and have the rest of their loans forgiven, but it is only a first step. It is not enough for the 37 million student loan borrowers in our country.
We respectfully ask for an additional Presidential executive order that will:
• Allow all student loans to be repaid at an annual rate of 10% of discretionary income and be forgiven after 10 years;
• Expand the program to cover all student loans, public and private.
Why is this important?
Student loan debt buries 37 million people in the United States and now exceeds $1 trillion. On average, students borrow $26,000 to pay for an education which is either free or of minimal cost in most advanced countries. Money going to repay banks and federal loan agencies could instead be going back into the economy.
Higher education is increasingly treated as an individual commodity, rather than a public good or an investment in our collective future. As a result, millions are putting off major purchases and life decisions – especially graduates of color, who have disproportionately higher debt. This has crushing ripple effect on our economy: students and recent graduates are forced into low-wage jobs in order to immediately start making payments back to banks and lenders; instead of stimulating the economy by spending millions of dollars, many are pinching pennies to just try to keep up with the interest on their loans. Meanwhile, total public and private tuition costs are $170 billion per year – one fifth of what we spend on the military per year. We can afford to do better.
This is NOT only a "young person's problem." Most of the student loan debt is owed by people older than 30, and they are forced to put dreams of a house, a family, a future, on hold.
We can make student loan repayment simple and fair and provide a lifeline for student borrowers who have fallen on difficult times.