Vice President Kamala Harris came to town on Monday to talk up the Biden-Harris administration’s new program to give public service workers a break on student debt.
ABOVE PHOTO: Vice President Kamala Harris listens to Kelli Gray, Social Work Services Manager, Philadelphia Department of Human Services express her experience with her personal struggle with student debt on Monday, April 8, 2024 in Philadelphia. Harris went to Pennsylvania, a battleground state, to promote debt relief in a meeting with city and school employees in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)
By Denise Clay-Murray
While Americans can’t agree on a lot of things, one thing they do agree on is the importance of a good education.
But getting a good education and the opportunities that come with it can cause some unintended consequences.
Kelli Gray, social work services manager for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services, wanted to help her fellow man. But to do so, she needed to get some additional education.
What she didn’t realize was the impact the student loans she would need to get that education would have on not only her life, but on the lives of her children. For example, the volume of student loan debt Gray held from her undergraduate and graduate studies not only stopped her from getting her PhD, but also complicated putting her twin daughters through school.
“My daughter graduated from Spelman,” Gray said. “When we got the letter saying she was accepted to Spelman, I knew I had to ask for a Parent PLUS loan, and I knew I needed a cosigner because my loans were outrageous, and my credit wasn’t good. My loans were $350,000.”
But in February, Gray was one of the many people nationwide that got a letter from the company maintaining their student loans with some really good news.
Their student loans were being forgiven because they were giving back to their communities as public servants. Overnight, Gray’s financial world changed, she said.
“Two years ago, I kept trying to buy a house, but my credit was so bad, I couldn’t do it,” she said. “To my surprise, I got approved for the loan to buy a house. I just want to thank you guys so much for looking out for my family. If it wasn’t for you guys, I’d still be renting.”
That was just one of the stories that Vice President Kamala Harris heard when she came to the William Cramp Elementary School in Kensington to speak about the Biden-Harris administration’s plans to relieve the nation’s student debt crisis.
On Monday, President Joe Biden announced a program designed to provide relief from student debt to more than 30 million student loan borrowers. Under the plan, borrowers could get the interest on their loans canceled, and some borrowers including public service workers, and those who have been paying loans for 20 years or more, could find their debt completely forgiven.
When you consider what America gets from its public servants, providing a lifeline to a group of people who used education to provide a service to others and now find an anchor of student debt tied to the leg up that education helped provide.
“Who are our public servants?” Harris asked. “They are teachers. They are nurses. They’re firefighters, police officers, librarians, bus drivers and social workers. They are people who have dedicated themselves to serving the public, often working on behalf of people they have never met and otherwise have no obligation to other than the fact that they care. Many are silently struggling with student loan debt. And so the work that President Biden and I have been doing throughout the last three years has been to address one of the big issues facing not only our public servants, but many people who carry student loan debt, which is what can we do to relieve some of the burden?”
If the plan is approved, those eligible for loan forgiveness or discharge programs that haven’t yet applied and borrowers facing financial difficulties could also find their loans forgiven. The Department of Education would also use data on borrowers that it already has to find qualifying borrowers and credit their accounts.
The plan is expected to be fully implemented in the fall.
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