What Should the US Do about Student Debt?
Vocab level: B2
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We begin today with student loans.
When a college student can't afford to pay for their tuition, whether through scholarships, grants, or hard-earned savings,
they can turn to the government to borrow money
and pay it back after they graduate.
When the Covid 19 pandemic hit the US,
the federal government decided to give college students a break
and said they could hit pause on paying those loans back every month
and without any extra punishments for paying them off later.
Well, 5 years later, that pause is coming to an end.
And today, students have to get back to paying off that debt.
Here's the White House press secretary on the matter.
The student loan portfolio controlled by the federal government is nearly 1.6 trillion dollars.
But fewer than 4 out of 10 borrowers are in repayment.
This is unsustainable, unfair, and a huge liability for American taxpayers.
Now, the department is asking millions of borrowers with defaulted student loans to pay up by resuming their collections.
Student loans go into default after 270 days without payment.
And borrowers who don't make payments could be facing some major punishments.
As soon as this summer, if these students or former students don't pay what they owe,
the government could even make their employer take a chunk of money from an employees paycheck to pay a debt.
Now, there are some lawmakers that believe some of this student debt should be erased entirely,
in part because tuition at American universities and colleges is at an all-time high.
Here's Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
So, remember that the proposal is to have income caps on it.
So, it's not cancelling student loan debt for people who are making a bazillion bucks.
I know everyone wants to talk about, you know, the person with the fancy diploma or whatever.
40% of these folks never graduated from college.
So, they're wrestling with student loan debt on what you make as a high school graduate.
It's time to turn them loose.
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