There are a lot of different ways to look at the student crisis in America.

You’ve got the big numbers, like $1.6 trillion — the total amount owed. You’ve got the big picture, like how student debt holds back our economy — and people’s future — by keeping people from buying a home, starting a small business, or starting a family.

But then you’ve got the personal stories.

Earlier this year, we asked this team how student debt affects you. I’m grateful to everyone who took a moment to share their experience. Story after story poured in. Here are just a few — they show how education's supposed to be the ticket to economic security, but even after years of hard work paying off loans, debt is still an anchor. Take a look:

I just paid off my student loan. I took one our for one year of college because my mother had breast cancer and I needed to help her out. That meant I could not work my usual four jobs to pay for school. I graduated in 1999. It is 2021. I am going to be 50 in November. Anne R. [[link removed]]

I don't midd payments, I've never had a late payment, and yet 13 years post-graduation I have a hefty five-figure sum of debt. This has prevented me from so much. Buying a house, having children... it has robbed me of a future that I financially cannot afford because of my loan payments. [[link removed]]

I have been paying my loan from my graduate school for 8 years, up to $3,800/month. Still, the loan is nearly twice as large as it was when I first graduated, due to compounding interest. I make a good wage in the healthcare industry, however my loan balance still exceeds my annual salary. Elizabeth L. [[link removed]]

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I grew up at a time when our government invested more in higher education. That’s why I could get my degree at a state school that only cost $50 a semester, and it opened a million doors for me.

But that story just isn’t possible today. Government has hacked away at resources for education while slashing taxes for the rich, and shoved the burden onto students. Now two-thirds of students at state schools have to go into debt to graduate. So we need to make public college and technical schools tuition-free — and we need to right this wrong by canceling student debt.

Alongside terrific partners like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, I’m still pushing the Biden administration to use its executive authority to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt for tens of millions of Americans.

And I won’t stop fighting until it’s done — President Biden can make it happen with one stroke of the pen. But in the meantime, here’s some of updates on what we’ve gotten done:

-- Made student loan forgiveness tax-free, which will make it that much easier to cancel student debt.

-- Got the Biden administration to extend the pause on student loan payments through January 31, 2022, after it was initially set to expire at the end of September.

-- Called out how two giant student loan servicers were misleading, cheating, and abusing borrowers — including throwing hurdes in front of teachers, firefighters, and other public servants trying to get the debt forgiveness they’d earned. Now, those two servicers have ended their contracts with the Department of Education. And the Biden administration just announced how they’re going to improve the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so more people can actually get relief.

After four years of Betsy DeVos running the Department of Education as practically a satellite office for greedy student loan services and fraudster for-profit colleges, we now have a chance to make things right.

And the best way to clear the decks is to get President Biden to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt. It will help tens of millions of Americans, lift a huge weight off our economy, and start to close the racial wealth gap.

I’ve been in this fight for a while — the first bill I introduced in the Senate was to slash the interest rate on federal student loans to the same deal the big banks got. For years, I’ve been pushing ways to roll back student loan debt because students don't have an army of lobbyists and lawyers. We owe it to our future to do right by them. And I’m not going to let up until we get this done.

Thanks for being a part of this,

Elizabeth




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