Student Loan Crisis Looms As Payment Freezes Set To Expire

Americans owe a collective $1.7 TRILLION in student loan debt, and those bills are about to come due. Student loan payments were frozen for most people throughout the pandemic, but that freeze is about to expire in a few months, and many are left wondering how they're going to pay the loans back. The crisis was put on hold, but never actually solved, and we have to do something before we send the economy into a tailspin over something that was easily avoidable. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Citizens of the United States collectively hold $1.7 trillion in student loan debt. And while most of those payments have been frozen during the pandemic, meaning you don't have to make the payments and the interest has been suspended during that time, the clock is about to run out and beginning in September, most people are going to have to start repaying those loans again. $1.7 trillion, the student loan debt crisis has been put on ice, but folks, it was not killed and it's thawing out right now. And unfortunately the Biden administration appears to have backtracked on any effort whatsoever to eliminate any, all, some, even a few pennies of that student loan debt. And instead, instead of, you know, we're going to forgive 10,000, we might forgive 50,000. We might forgive all of it. Nope. That's not the talk anymore. Now they're saying, hey, you should go through these avenues that are already established with the department of education to see about getting your loans forgiven or into forbearance, blah, blah, blah, all that crap, because that's what it is at this point. It's crap. It's pure total bull crap.

People were excited during the primaries and during the election process at the prospect of having their student loans forgiven. $1.7 trillion, and by the way, this is not limited to just, oh, you know, people in their mid twenties, just fresh out of college. We have people in their late sixties and seventies with student loan debt that they're unable to pay. This is a problem that crosses generations. This is not just young people making stupid decisions. It's the fact that the cost of college has risen exponentially over the past couple of decades, to the point where a middle-class income no longer cuts it. You can't pay for a semester of college unless you're a well-to-do American, or you've been privileged enough to be able to put money aside, which is not something most American families are even able to do. So you're at the mercy of the loan giver. This is a crisis, and it's been a blessing for millions and millions of people who haven't had to make these payments for over a year now. But that blessing is about to go away. And people are already, according to a recent article in Bloomberg, they're freaking out about it because they can't make those payments.

They're still not in a good place financially. So what happens when all of this comes due, when the bill comes due? Instead of being able to pay for other things, perhaps medication, perhaps car repairs, perhaps on new clothes, that money goes to the banks. That money goes to the people holding the student loan debt. It's money that doesn't make its way actually into the US economy is what I'm getting at. So the economy takes a hit. It takes a big hit. Most of this could be wiped out with a stroke of a pen from president Biden issuing an executive order. Now I've heard conflicting reports and I have had people from different organizations reach out to me saying, no, he can erase it all with an executive order. I've had other people tell me, no, Farron, he can not do that with executive order. So I don't know where exactly all the truth is. But I do know this, this administration has already basically given up on this issue.