illinilaw08

I'd be all for making student loans interest free as well! I'd think you might even be able to get all 50 D Senators to vote for that. But again, show me the 10 Republican votes you are going to get to pass that - because you need 60 votes in the Senate to get anything passed which isn't part of a reconciliation bill...

I mean, the system is what the system is right? Some Democrats don't support loan forgiveness at all (see Pelosi comments last week). And when you need all 50 of their votes in the Senate (based on the reasonable assumption you can't find 10 R votes in support) AND you need to get it done in a massive reconciliation bill to avoid the filibuster in the Senate, it isn't likely to happen in the legislature right now. Add to that the fact it is not clear Biden can wipe out any student loan debt at issue with the stroke of a pen (and even if he does, I'd assume that act would be tied up in court for awhile re: if he has that authority), and there just isn't a viable path to getting it done right now. If they can get forbearance continued in the interim, at least they are providing some tangible value to people struggling with student loan debt while the Democrats who are in favor try to convince the people who aren't to come to the table. I don't think there's any reason to question the sincerity of the vocal Reps and Senators who are pro- cancellation of student loan debt. They just don't have the votes for it yet. If you are in favor of cancelling student loan debt, you need to help convince the votes against cancellation that it is in their political best interest to support forgiveness.

Personal guess based on following this over the last several months. Here's how I get to that: I don't think Biden's admin is going to conclude he has authority to cancel debt without Congressional intervention - and even if they do, he's running out of time before the current freeze expires.* I don't think he will ever get any Republican buy-in on the issue, so it isn't going to pass in any regular bill (need 60 votes because of the filibuster, so you need 10 Rs to vote for it to pass). I don't think the entire Democratic caucus is convinced cancelling any portion of debt is a good idea, so you won't see it tacked on to a reconciliation type bill (which would need all 50 D Senators to vote for it). I think the one tangible thing they can get done is to continue the forbearance - which actually does provide tangible benefits to people struggling under the weight of their debt - either through the temporary relief from payments or by making payments which actually pay down principal. * There are some political concerns on cancelling student loan debt; we've seen some of that in this thread. Is this stimulus to people who don't really need it (anecdotally, I'm a person who would gladly take the cancellation of the last of my debt, but don't need it)? Will people who did pay off their loans complain about how unfair this is (some will do so loudly)? Does it leave out people who didn't get a degree? Etc.

You weren't promised one. Biden campaigned on it - but he needs Congress to pass it (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/27/student-loan-forgiveness-schumer-warren-pressley-urge-biden-to-extend-payment-pause.html). Some Senate Democrats are pushing for up to $50k by executive order (same article as the last one). The Department of Education has allegedly been working on a memo for a number of months on whether the Biden administration has authority to do that without Congressional consent (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/white-house-promised-memo-biden-s-authority-cancel-student-debt-n1268681). Republicans don't seem particularly interested in student loan forgiveness (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/10/us/politics/biden-student-loans.html; https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-congress-student-loan-forgiveness-110034729.html). So, if you want student loan forgiveness (I certainly do for the last little bit I have), you either need to (a) hope the Department of Education memo concludes Biden can do it unilaterally (and Biden actually goes ahead and does it); or (b) hope a couple Republicans decide student loan forgiveness would be a good thing. Personally, I think the can is going to be kicked down the road - interest and payment forbearance continues through March of 2022...

https://www.al.com/news/2021/07/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-on-treating-unvaccinated-dying-covid-patients.html This is absolutely tragic.

We know there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy out there, and it isn't just from anti-vaxxers (https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/politics/marines-coronavirus-vaccines/index.html; https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/25/republicans-are-more-likely-get-vaccine-after-hearing-trump-supports-it-they-havent-heard-it/). We also seem to be seeing the better people are informed, the more likely they are to take the vaccine (https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/978407316/how-do-you-reach-trump-voters-who-say-they-dont-want-the-vaccine-try-doctors). Giving people who are already hesitant to take the vaccine an excuse to not take it is potentially bad. I completely understand why the FDA acted as it did. But there's certainly potential for unintended consequences here - particularly when headlines say "US Calls for Pause on Johnson & Johnson Vaccine After Blood Clotting Cases" (NYT); and "US calls for a pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccine" (CNN). If you read the article, you see the blood clot issue is very, very rare. If you just read the headline, you could come away with confirmation that vaccines aren't safe. People who are vaccine hesitant and who only read the headlines could have a disincentive from taking any vaccine, which potentially leads to fewer shots in arms, which is a bad result.

I'm getting J&J at a CVS in Colorado this week. Definitely good news to see the one shot option showing up with a greater degree of frequency.

Tex, the bolded is garbage. I suspect you know it is garbage. But it's something a "liberal" on the Tucker Carlson show would say. Liberals all hate America guys! More to the point, if there were a "things you like about America" thread, I suspect people in this thread would have plenty of positive things to say. But this is a COVID thread, dude. And we haven't been doing great in that arena. Hopefully with an administration in place who wants to tackle this crisis, there will be more positive news in this thread and you can stop complaining about this thread not being sunshine and roses.

You started the comment by saying "This public health stuff is difficult" which sure seems to be excusing the objectively terrible response to the vaccine rollout in the US. This stuff is tough guys! Mistakes are going to happen! You then set the standard for a response as "third world countries." So long as the US is outpacing countries with significantly less wealth and resources, we're doing A-OK! Finally, the response to criticism of how the US is handling things is "where would you rather be living?" The implication here is, and continues to be, that if you criticize the US COVID response, maybe you should leave. And if your point here is to just say, "guys, I think the US is great notwithstanding its flaws!" it really isn't particularly on point for a thread specifically about COVID...

Tex, come on. The Trump administration had no plan for a vaccine rollout period - and the Biden administration has to start from scratch (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/report-biden-admin-discovers-trump-had-zero-plans-for-covid-vaccine-distribution; https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/health/trump-biden-covid-19-vaccine-numbers-bn/index.html) In the final days of the Trump presidency, the HHS Secretary announced the government would begin releasing vaccines which had been held in reserve for second shots... when that reserve simply didn't exist. The federal government straight up lied to the states. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/15/trump-vaccine-reserve-used-up/ https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/01/15/jared-polis-federal-government-covid-vaccines-lied-to/ Excusing this stuff because some countries have worse, more corrupt, governments is absurd. We're over 400,000 lives lost. Not screwing up the vaccine rollout would have saved lives. How can you hand wave this away by saying "public health stuff is difficult?"

I'm just waiting for interest rates to be re-instated to pay of the last of my loans (and also to see if Biden does some sort of forgiveness by executive order). With that being said, I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, and IMO, the fix on student loans in bankruptcy is to make them dischargeable over time. Most people who do well with their degrees are able to accumulate assets over their first several years after graduation while also paying down their debt. Those people - depending on the state they live in - will find bankruptcy to be a not particularly viable option - not without giving up assets. Those are the people who don't really need a discharge of student loan debts, and it prevents the issue of people graduating and immediately filing which would completely screw up the lending market. If you make them dischargeable over time, people who didn't get the benefit of their degree have an opportunity to get out of debt that they can never get on top of (note, if we were to make public education free in college, I'd be less concerned about "over time" on dischargeability of existing student loan debt). That's the fix - in my opinion - on loans in existence now. Regardless of the fact that I have paid off the vast majority of my existing loans, and that I have no kids and never plan to do so, I'm all for free public education in college - even if it means a greater tax burden on myself. The fact that I dealt with the yoke of student loan debt for a decade makes me want younger people to avoid going through what I've gone through, rather than making me mad that younger people will get a benefit which I did not receive.

The reason we are in the mess we are in today is because the conservative media apparatus, the President of the United States, and the majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate spent the time since November 7, 2020 amplifying conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen from Trump with no actual evidence of that fact. And when the courts overwhelmingly rejected those claims, continued to amplify and push remedies outside the framework of the Constitution to prevent Biden from being seated as President. So yes, it is more than just Trump being Trump - as Mitt Romney said on the Senate floor, if the majority of Republicans had told the American people the truth from the word go - that Donald Trump lost the election - we might not be in the mess that we are in today.

The Senate is a bigger problem from a representation standpoint though because it simply has more power than the House. The Senate confirms judges with lifetime appointments, treaties, etc. The current Senate split is 50/50, but the half with D senators represents 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half. So even if you increased the House to make it more small d democratic (more representative of the US population at large rather than by party), you still have a system which allows a minority party to control the Senate, which in turn controls who controls the federal judiciary.

This isn't "rigging things." Give every American a representative voice in the House and the Senate. "No taxation without representation" was the rallying call the American Republic was founded upon. Republican policies seek to make it more difficult to vote (voter ID laws, no vote by mail, limited ballot drop-off locations in heavily Democratic areas of red states) because of a statistically irrelevant fraud concern (or more cynically because they know greater participation is bad for them). Democratic policies seek to make it easier to vote and give every American citizen who wants it* a voice in the House and Senate. If the Republican Party is convinced that greater participation in our republic is bad for them politically, perhaps they should embrace policies which can earn them votes among a greater share of the population. * If PR, DC, Guam, American Samoa, etc. don't want to be a state, fine. But saying, "you can't make them a state because they will vote a certain way" is silly. ** If Maryland or Virginia were willing to take DC, that's fine. But if they aren't, an urban area with a greater population than Wyoming shouldn't be left without representation solely because they are going to vote in a way you don't like.

There's also the problem of the entire conservative media structure amplifying bad faith objections to Democratic policies. Two easy examples: 1) Death panels and the Affordable Care Act; and 2) The Green New Deal means the Democrats want to ban hamburgers.