In a little more than a month, the COVID pandemic will be over – at least on the books.
As has been reported, the Biden administration plans to let the coronavirus public health emergency expire on May 11. COVID is still here, but this move signals that Capitol Hill sees the pandemic as something more manageable, and no longer the crisis it was three years ago.
States have long since opened up, businesses are doing their best to recover, mask mandates are lifted, we’re flying, going to public performances and enjoying a near-full return to normalcy.
But in progressive circles, it’s March of 2020, and the wolf is at the door.
The wolf, in this case, is in the form of banks who want student borrowers to start making payments on their loans again.
The student loan payment pause started in March of 2020, and it allowed federal student loan borrowers to skip payments. The interest rate on their loans was set to 0%. Pause extensions followed, as did the Administration’s $400 billion plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower, now being considered by the Supreme Court
But one bank dared to ask for its money back – now. As Business Insider reported, SoFi Bank filed a lawsuit last month to end the latest extension of the student-loan payment pause. The bank argued that it has suffered financial harm from the pause.
Them’s fighting words for Massachusetts lawmakers Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley. The pair their cries of “foul!” to paper Wednesday in a letter blasting SoFi Bank.
“Your company’s attempt to use the courts to enact a backdoor repeal of this payment pause – at the same time the Supreme Court debates whether it will halt President Biden’s student debt cancellation plan, and while touting your values as a company that will ‘do the right thing,’ – is unconscionable and you owe your customers, and the American public, an explanation for these actions,” wrote Rep. Pressley and Senator Warren.
It’s OK to borrow money, it’s OK to sign a Master Promissory Note vowing to pay the money back, but it’s not OK to be asked to actually do so, even after the public health emergency that effectively shut down the country is over and jobs are plentiful.
Banks who expect that student loan contract to be honored are not “doing the right thing.”
Banks, of course, rarely do the right thing, because they’re greedy, according to progressive wisdom. And that’s part of the lawmakers’ argument against SoFi. The bank has lots of money, has apparently been profitable, therefore, it doesn’t really need student borrowers to start paying back their loans.
That’s not how it works.
Who knows how long the Supreme Court will take to decide the case, but if it hasn’t been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days later. If the court rules in the Biden Administration’s favor, well, then taxpayers down the line will be on the hook for that $400 billion.
That’s how Democrats define “the right thing.”
