According to Forbes.com, the latest candidate to jump in the 2016 race for president, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, would work to forgive some student loan debt if elected president.
In a speech he gave to students at the University of Iowa back in February, Sanders said that the federal government has made billions of dollars off of student loan interest payments in the last 10 years.
“We must end the practice of the government making billions in profits from student loans taken out by low and moderate income families. That is extremely regressive public policy. It also makes no sense that students and their parents are forced to pay interest rates for higher education loans that are much higher than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages,” Sanders said.
Sanders’ numbers are correct by the CBO’s standards but have been openly challenged. According to the Washington Post, the math is fuzzy and there is no true way of knowing if the federal government is making a true profit off student loan payments.
Either way, numbers show and prove that the federal government has to pivot towards a new process for collecting payments from student loans or risk creating a new set of economic problems.
That, more than anything, seems to be part of the point that Sanders is making. He also acknowledges that if students weren’t forced to pay back so much of the loan or if the interest rates were lower, they would then have the ability to reinvest into the economy by purchasing a new car or a new home.
Talk of student loan debt and higher education will continue to increase as we head into the 2016 election season. Sanders is an Independent but running as a Democrat. He is a socialist and fiery progressive. His approach to certain issues may turn some off, but the radical views that he has on fixing the financial issues within higher education should turn positive attention to a problem many students struggle with.
