The 20 undersigned community, civil rights, consumer, and student advocacy organizations applaud the Senate Democrats’ student debt cancellation proposal. The plan will take decisive action to get immediate and impactful relief to millions of Americans. It will enable many economically distressed borrowers to focus on their own personal safety and that of others, while also freeing up extra dollars they can use to put back into the economy.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 19, 2020 CONTACT: Alexis Goldstein, alexis@ourfinancialsecurity.org Senate Democrats Plan to Cancel Student Debt Would Stimulate the Economy and Provide Crucial Relief to Borrowers Statement from Alexis Goldstein, Senior Policy Analyst, Americans for Financial Reform: “The Senate Democrats plan to cancel student debt as an economic stimulus in response to the COVID-19
Apart from the obvious fact that this is a public health crisis and should be treated as such, we should all be immensely skeptical of any suggestion from Wall Street that it needs a bailout or any kind of assistance. We need to help people, not profits.
AFR Applauds the Senate vote to block harmful rollback of Borrower Defense protections. Every Senate Democrat voted to roll back the 2019 changes that makes it even more difficult for students at schools that broke the law to get the debt relief they deserve. Joining the Democrats were ten Republicans: Senators John Boozman, Shelley Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Cory Gardner, Josh Hawley, Martha McSally, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Dan Sullivan, and Todd Young all voted to reject DeVos’ proposal that gave the green light to bad actors.
His career is marred by a record of supporting dangerous deregulatory policies that have left our financial system ill equipped to face the economic challenges it is now confronted by. This includes efforts to weaken the Volcker rule that will further damage the resiliency of major financial institutions and a housing policy that treats market deregulation as the solution to our nation’s housing affordability crisis.
“We are in a much more fragile situation than we should be because the regulators haven’t been on the job,” said Marcus Stanley, policy director for Americans for Financial Reform. “This is a real economic crisis we’re facing.”
