A petition calling for cancelling student loans, change.org/CancelStudentLoans, currently has close to 600,000 signatures and is expected to reach a million soon, according to the Student Loan Justice (SLJ) organization.
“What is interesting about this petition is that unlike all of the proposed student loan cancellation plans which require raising taxes, the president has all the authority needed to cancel 85% of all student loans with the stroke of a pen,” said Allan Collinge of SLJ. “Not one dime would need to be appropriated to do this, and not one dime would be added to the national debt. The taxpayers paid for these loans many years ago (and made most of their money back), so they should not have to pay twice!
“The nation, now more than ever, needs stimulus, and even before the coronavirus, 80% of federal student loan borrowers were never going to be able to repay their federal student loans,” Collinge added. “It has become a failed lending system, and that is twice as true now. Simply put: the federal student loan system has become viciously predatory, hyper-inflationary, and at this point now constitutes a national threat. There are 55 million people in the country who either have – or are cosigned on – student loans. 44 million of these people are losing sleep over them. This is nearly enough voters to elect a president outright!” For more information, contact Collinge at [email protected] or (202) 594-1120.