The U.S. economy has been strangely dismal for new college graduates. How dismal? Well, the average college graduate under 40 who carries student debt currently has a median net worth of just $8,700. The Washington Post recently advised newly-minted college graduates to give up hope and go live in their parents’ basements.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wants to help.
Eschewing efforts to create the private-sector jobs that drive economic growth and wealth creation, the progressive Senator instead proposed a new law this week that would generously forgive the student loans of government workers and employees at qualifying nonprofits.
“Teachers, police officers, public health workers and other public servants should be applauded and supported — and not drowned in debt to pay for the degrees many such jobs require,” Blumenthal declared in a press release obtained by Red Alert Politics.
“The current Public Service Loan Forgiveness program should be expanded — and made more flexible — to enable student debt to be worked down or off completely,” the Senator added.
Blumenthal’s bill would supercharge the existing, already-generous Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which completely forgives the student loans incurred by qualifying government and nonprofit workers if these special workers manage to stay employed for 10 straight years and make their loan payments each month.
Nonprofit groups that qualify are tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations. Such organizations have included the local chapters of the now-defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Center for American Progress, which is related to the leftist blog ThinkProgress.
Workers in private-sector, for-profit industries currently enjoy no such loan forgiveness program and wouldn’t enjoy the impressive additional benefits Blumenthal proposes.
Under the Democrat’s plan, government and qualifying nonprofit operatives would only need to work two years to get a 15 percent discount off their student loans. Two years later, they would get another 15 percent discount. After just six years of work, these special workers would have fully half of their student loans written off. After eight years, it would be 70 percent. After 10 years, government workers and 501(c)(3) employees would owe nothing on their student loans.
“We should reward public service — particularly as the need for talented and dedicated public servants grows,” Blumenthal said, according to Red Alert.
The Democratic Senator gave no indication of how much this additional bounty for certain, special Americans would cost the federal government.
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