Hannah Finnie and Maggie Thompson,writers for the political blog site Think Progress, have co-authored a critique of Donald Trump's recently unveiled student debt plan. They start off by criticizing Donald for reveling his plan with only 26 days left in the election, accusing him of "...trying out another con on the American voters...." They explain that in a speech in Ohio, Trump proposed a relatively good plan, they even thought it sounded similar to Obama's reforms. Trump's proposal is to create an income-driven repayment plan that would place a cap on repayments dependent on the borrower's income. He is also suggesting loan forgiveness after 15 years. Although this sounds like a good idea, Hannah and Maggie are quick to point out that, "...Trump has said many times that he wants to shut down or reduce to shreds the Department of Education..." They note that the Republican Party platform even promotes the removal of the government from education. With this information, they argue that if Trump has his way, and eliminates federal student loans, students would be forced to go through private companies. Leaving the government to pay back billions of dollars of unpaid debt each year to those companies after the 15 year mark is up and the student loans have been forgiven. They declare that all of that money would go right to Wall Street as "...giveaways...." They also argue that interest rates would climb during those 15 years, from the 4.75% currently given to federal loan borrower's to 9.5-19% from private markets. This is especially troubling to low credit and low-income students whose payments, as claimed by the authors, could increase by as much as 78% over the life of their loan. This is assuming they were able to get the loan in the first place, as many banks would not consider them good borrowers to lend to. The coauthors provided a chart of how much more students would be paying over the life of the loan from each state. For an example, according the the table, in Texas alone students would end up paying $6,824-$22,744 more than they would with federal loans. I think it is really beneficial that the authors decided to include this graph because it really puts it into perspective how much damage this plan can cause students. I think they did a good job of not just presenting the facts, but explaining how they came to these conclusions as well. But Hannah and Maggie don't stop there, they describe how Trump, in a statement made last week, implied "...that he is considering the elimination of other programs to help borrowers, like Public Service Loan Forgiveness." They also call Trump out for using a discredited study to make his case to de-regulate schools. The authors declare that Trump's plan would only hurt students, and with time running out in the campaign, he has not provided anything more than "...empty rhetoric."
Hannah is a Senior Policy and Communications Associate with Generation Progress, and Maggie is the Executive Director of Generation Progress. Both work for the Millennial Engagement arm of the Center for American Progress. I believe this article is directed at college aged voters, as this plan would affect them the most. I find them both credible and reliable in their claims that Trump has created a devious plan that would have serious consequences for students. They offered not only their opinions, but accurate information and evidence to better uphold their thoughts, and I am inclined to believe them.
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