>> Continued From the Previous Page <<
The Biden administration spent years dangling forgiveness as a campaign promise. But behind the scenes, his team knew it was a political ploy, not a legal possibility. While liberal college administrators cheered, students racked up debt they were falsely told might vanish with the stroke of Biden’s pen.
Perino didn’t dismiss the struggles of borrowers. “It doesn’t mean that the system couldn’t be changed or that the interest rate can’t be lowered, but they are going to have to pay it back,” she added.
That reality is now here.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon declared an end to what she called an “irresponsible” policy of indefinite pauses, which started as a temporary relief measure during COVID-19 under Trump but was later abused for political gain by Biden. The department has begun reaching out to over five million borrowers who are already in default, and collections are about to resume.
In a fiery op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, McMahon didn’t mince words: “Colleges and universities call themselves nonprofits, but for years they have profited massively off the federal subsidy of loans, hiking tuition and piling up multibillion-dollar endowments while students graduate six figures in the red.”
WATCH:
She exposed how many of these institutions gamed the system. “A widely cited 2015 study found that for every dollar of increased federal caps on subsidized loans, colleges raised tuition by 60 cents.” In other words, universities used student loan hikes to justify their own price gouging, often pushing students into degrees with little to no market value.
McMahon also ripped into Biden’s dishonest campaign tactics: “Biden dangled the carrot of loan forgiveness in front of young voters,” even though he “never had the authority to forgive student loans across the board.”
Now, the bill has come due.
“I am announcing the end of this dishonest and irresponsible policy,” she declared. “We will conform the department’s repayment options to federal court decisions and end the Biden-era practice of zero-interest, zero-accountability forbearances that are pushing borrowers into loan delinquency and default.”
Raise a Toast with the Bulletproof Trump Whiskey Glass – A Patriotic Statement Piece
Starting May 5, the administration will begin processing 1.8 million borrowers into repayment plans. And there are real consequences for those who ignore their debts.
“Borrowers who don’t make payments on time will see their credit scores go down, and in some cases, their wages automatically garnished,” McMahon warned. “Why? Not because we want to be unkind to student borrowers. Borrowing money and failing to pay it back isn’t a victimless offense. Debt doesn’t go away; it gets transferred to others. If borrowers don’t pay their debts to the government, taxpayers do.”
This marks a sharp break from Biden’s soft-on-debt approach, and a return to fiscal accountability. For years, universities cashed in while students were sold pipe dreams. The Trump administration is now calling time on the scam—and making sure someone pays the tab that’s been growing on the American taxpayer’s back.
