Pausing Student Loan Payments Hasn't Hurt The Economy - So Let's Cancel All Of It

One of the biggest arguments against cancelling student loan debt is from people saying that it could hurt the economy. But payments have been suspended for nearly two years, and we're being told regularly that the economy is doing better each month. So if the economy continues to improve even without the debt payments, why can't we just cancel all of it and be done? Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins talks about the possibilities and how cancellation would dramatically improve the lives of millions of people.

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

Activists are calling for president Joe Biden to forgive student loan debt here in the United States, not just push the deadline for repayment back again. It's already been pushed back three different times. But to forgive it. And the arguments against forgiving student loan have already been debunked by the past two years, because the arguments we're hearing is that this would somehow hurt the economy. You know, oh, suddenly all this debt that was owed to these institutions, to the federal government, they don't get their money back. Oh God, they're gonna go under, right. Have they gone under in the past two years, that payments have been suspended? Think about that for a second, folks.

We are coming up on the two year anniversary of the suspension of student loan payments. And what have we heard through at least half of the last year? The economy's doing great. Everybody's doing better. Unemployment is falling. We keep hearing these same talking points out of the Biden administration that everything economy wise is kicking. So why not forgive the loans? Because if everything can do well when people aren't having to make these payments, why make 'em start making the payments again? See, it makes no sense because if things are able to rebound without people having to make these payments, and let's be honest, a large part of why things are rebounding a little bit, at least prior to Omicron, is because people didn't have to make these payments. What is the number, $5 billion per month.

That's how much money is going back into the pockets of Americans with this student loan repayment pause, $5 billion per month. And do you know what they're doing with it? They're spending it. They're saving some of it. They're using it to put it back into the economy for the most part and that in turn creates jobs, it creates opportunities. But when that extension goes away again in May, that's 5 billion less the economy will have every single month. But there's also the ripple effects. Studies have shown that if we forgive student loan debt, completely erase it, we're looking at economic benefits of at least $90 billion per year in new economic activity and the creation of up to 1.1 million new American jobs. You wanna get your economy humming. You want things to actually work for the middle class. Forgive the debt.

The past two years have proven that this country does not need those student loan debt payments in order to rebound, in order to succeed. Because once people start having to make those payments again, you are going to see an economic crash. Maybe not like we saw in 2007, 2008, maybe not even like what we saw last year, but we will see those good economic numbers start going down. We will see quality life decrease. We're already going to see some of that with the expiration of the extended child tax credit. Do you really want American voters to take a second financial hit in an election year, president Biden? Because that's what you're setting them up for. But you have the authority to prevent that from happening. All you gotta do is act on it.