This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.
Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci, educated educators talking
education.
Welcome Tuesday night Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk and yes, we were on last
night, we were on tonight and yeah, we're gonna be on Wednesday, we're gonna be on Thursday,
we're gonna be on Friday, every date of the week now, Busted Pencils is here, educated
educators talking education, the number, 844-967-2789, Johnny Lupinacci, hey, we, you know,
sometimes things happen, family emergency, gotta call though, everything's okay, things
you're taking care of, cannot make it though, we'll be back tomorrow, but things are okay,
Johnny Lupinacci, take care out there, make sure the family is safe, and again, everybody
out there Busted Pencils, we're thinking about you, Johnny Lupinacci, the number again,
844-967-2789, you know, we're gonna have recurring guests that we've had on the show
many times, but you know, we're gonna reintroduce you to our guests tonight, Alan Collins from
studentlonesstudentlongjustice.org, Alan, welcome back to Busted Pencils, how are you
doing, my friend?
Well, it's great to be here, Jim, you guys are really bringing the candle at all ends at
this point here.
Hey, you know, it's really exciting, Johnny and I were, you know, incredibly excited to
find out from civic media that, you know, we're moving the show to five days a week,
and in fact, reach out to you because we're thinking, you know, studentlonejustice, Alan,
you've been on the show, you've been a great friend, and always bringing lots of great
information.
So, you know, again, having regular check-ins with you and your organization is something
we look forward to, and I know all the listeners of Busted Pencils, too, are gonna benefit
from this.
Alan, you know, anybody who has met you on the show before knows, okay, he's the student
lone guy, okay, not the guy who gives student loans, but the guy who gives student loans
a lot of crap, and put it that way, okay.
He is out there fighting for, you know, student loan, people say student loan forgiveness.
Alan, we went through what was potentially going to be a $10,000, up to $20,000 for
forgiveness, kind of like, you know, false start from the Biden administration.
We got excited.
It didn't happen.
However, you have been at the student loan thing for a long time.
How about giving us a little student loan 101 for the listener right now?
Student loans, what's up, why should we be concerned?
And Alan, what's the future hold?
Sure, I'll try to give you a 40-year, 30-second elevator pitch.
Student loans are weaponized.
Student loans have been uniquely stripped of nearly every standard consumer protection
going back to the 1970s.
They've taken away bankruptcy rights, statutes of limitations.
They have offloaded all the risk of these loans, both federal and private student loans,
by the way, have been stripped of certainly bankruptcy rights.
So the loans have been turned into licenses to steal.
They've been turned into predatory, hyperinflationary loan instruments.
Quite frankly, I think something that the founding fathers really wanted to avoid
when they called for uniform bankruptcy laws in the Constitution.
I keep coming back to bankruptcy just because it's such an inherently vital part of any lending instrument.
Nobody wants to file for bankruptcy, obviously.
But the leverage of bankruptcy has got to be there to keep the lending side honest.
And so we've seen that strip from student loans and the results any economist probably
could have predicted.
But we've seen hyperinflation in the cost of college.
We've seen a massive, just massive increase in the nation's student loan debt tab.
And at this point, I've been doing this for 20 years now, and over the past three years,
I can tell you that the numbers, the top line statistics on the lending system show clearly
by all rational metrics, the entire lending system is essentially failed at this point.
And this is predatory lending at its finest.
This is something that could never have continued.
And now we are living that reality.
We're sort of in the wild west now, and nobody knew what's going to happen.
Okay, so forgiveness, it's all there, but we're going to talk about that, but Alan, just
to put it out there, so people understand what you're talking about here, too, first of
all, you're not saying for forgiveness, when you talk about bankruptcy and you talk about
the founding fathers, maybe it's, you know, to recognize, okay, first of all, you
know, the founding fathers were for bankruptcy because, you know, hey, one of the things that
was really bad in England was the fact that they were forever in debt and all of those
things.
So they initiated this, but maybe plan, you know, because people are like, I don't understand
I don't get it.
You're like, well, check it out.
Like I can sign up for a credit card, recklessly spend on that credit card.
And I'm pretty, I mean, I, I can kind of go, sorry, I can't pay up.
Let me off the hook with it, right?
I mean, well, it's a little more complicated than that, the idea, but I have the ability
to ask for that.
Yes.
Yes.
The, the ability to discharge a debt in bankruptcy gives you leverage of negotiation, where
you can sit down with the credit card company and they'll say, okay, well, we're going to,
we're going to cancel this interest.
We're going to maybe, maybe even cancel a bit of the principle, probably not.
But the point is you can negotiate a fair and reasonable settlement of the debt with student
loans, both federal and private, that leverage has been taken away from the borrower and
why?
Just stop, right, right, right, how, why, why in the world is this just fun, taken away
from student loans?
I mean, well, help us understand why that happened.
It's really a story of government and private greed.
The people in Washington, DC, there was a nation, a government-sponsored entity called
Sally May that was created under Richard Nixon, that was a private company, but it was publicly
supported, had members of the Treasury on its board, et cetera.
They saw the, they saw the opportunity to make a lot of money and removing the right
of bankruptcy lay at the core of this whole thing.
So that's what they started doing in the 1970s, restricting the right of bankruptcy until
1998 when it was made completely, like totally and forever, unavailable for borrowers.
What they said at the time, their rationale was that, oh, look at all these students,
they're, you know, fleeing from graduation to bankruptcy court and they trotted out
these stories.
Look at this, look at this law school student, look at this, look at this doctor.
And we now know, Tim, that back when student loans were treated the same as all other loans
in bankruptcy proceedings, the discharge rate was far lower than all other types of consumer
net.
It was like 0.3%, it was less than 1% discharge rate.
So there was never a rationale to remove the right, but, you know, here we are 50 years
later and we're seeing the, the end of that, the end of that very long and painful parade.
So here we are.
It's Alan Collins student loanjustice.org, the numbers 844-967-2789, gonna have a major
announcement here coming up just not yet though, because we're still doing a little bit
of student loan 101 for people.
So Alan, you said, you know, we started off and in fact, we, we came into, you know, recognizing
and noticing you, when the student loan forgiveness proposal got put forward by the Biden administration,
that was, you know, $10,000 and if you happen to have a Pell Grant up to $20,000, if you were
making $125,000 or less and that would just be canceled and millions and millions of
all the student loan borrow signed up and said, let me in on this deal, I would love it.
We got excited, we thought about, we imagined the possibilities, what would happen the next
day when that was gone and didn't have that and then it just didn't happen.
I remember interviewing you back when that came out and you were even at that point
gone, kind of like, it's not gonna happen anyway to him, you knew then that it wasn't
gonna happen.
How did you know that?
Well, I saw the cancellation debate come from nothing.
In fact, it was, our petition changed.org slash cancel student loans that elevated the
concept of canceling student loans by executive order into the public conversation in the first
place.
So it was a long story, but the Democrats went when the petition really started exploding
the Democratic Elizabeth Warren championed the concept, but I could, you know, I live
and breathe this stuff and I could tell early that Biden was, he did not want to cancel
loans.
He was one of the most, I was going to say, wait, yeah, give people just a little history
lesson on, on President Biden and bankruptcy.
Yeah, President Biden was one of the, one of the key, even as a junior senator in 1976,
he was a surprisingly key guy that oversaw the first removal of bankruptcy rights from
student loans.
And in 2005, he deserves the lion's share of the credit for getting bankruptcy taken
away from private student loans.
You know, people call him the MBNA president and, you know, a Delaware guy, you know,
President Biden, among all living, serving politicians, probably deserves more credit
than anyone for this student loan catastrophe that we now see.
So I knew Biden was never serious about canceling loans and quite frankly, I have to say in
hindsight, even Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, they were using it as a talking point
quite frankly for, I think, more political purposes than any real intention or desire
of actually canceling loans.
And so when, when Biden rolled out the $10 or $20,000 cancellation, we were glad to see
it, but, you know, the way he did it was doomed to fail.
It was designed to be sued.
And that's exactly what happened.
And with the conservative Supreme Court, we saw the results.
Biden pointed it to very ill-fitting law.
He could have just pointed to the Higher Education Act, which gives the secretary a very broad,
wide authority to cancel away the loans.
He didn't do that.
He used this weird law.
I won't even get into you.
But suffice it to say, the whole thing was kind of designed to fail from my perspective
and so now we're sort of stuck and Biden is trying to play the same game in the current
election.
Yeah, here we are.
Here we are again.
And so maybe potentially, so, you know, is it going to serve the current president as
he goes into the next reelection to campaign on student loan forgiveness again?
And so potentially going like, we're not going to see student loan forgiveness until
after November.
If, if at all, potentially, in that sense, I know people out there are listening.
And again, jump in eight, four, four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight, nine, our guest,
Alan Collins, student-loan-justice.org.
We're talking student loans, bankruptcy, all of that there.
But you know, we're getting ready to come up on the break.
We're going to come back and we're going to talk about it because I know there are people
out there going, but, but, but, but, but Tim Allen.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
There are, you know, these million, billion dollars of loans have been forgiven though since
then.
It's been done.
I mean, Biden's out there.
He's slashing.
He's breaking it down.
He is canceling that everywhere.
Oh, student loan forgiveness.
Maybe it's not a dream.
Maybe it's a reality.
I don't know.
More when we get back, busted pencils fully let it back after the break.
Tim and Johnny, two woke warriors teaching and learning in a post-pandemic world, educated
educators talking education.
This is busted pencils.
It is busted pencils and I am Dr. Tim Slecker.
Johnny Lupinacci, taking the night, family comes and always when the family comes first,
we make sure that we handle it.
Our guest, Alan, college, he is from studentlonejustice.org.
We're talking student loans 101, kind of laid it out there at bankruptcy.
All the problems with student loans, the forgiveness that was never going to be forgiven.
And Alan, I was just bringing up though the point that there are going to be people out
there going, but, but, but, but Tim and Alan, come on, give President Biden some credit.
He has slashed and wiped out billions of dollars in student loan debt.
Alan, is that true?
Well, the Department of Education has under these income-driven repayment plans that have
been in existence since 1995.
They have finally started to cancel some loans.
So I suppose Biden should maybe take credit for the fact that $131 billion in federal
student loans have indeed been canceled.
But Tim, these were loans that by law, by rule, should have been canceled years or even
decades ago.
And yeah, you have to take two steps back here because remember, $9 billion in interest
alone is being added to the nation's debt tab.
So Biden or the next President can cancel $131 billion in loans every three years, which
is what we've seen.
And the student loan balance of the country will still grow by 1.7 actually more trillion
dollars over 10 years.
So this is not a solution to the problem.
And most of the people who are seeing their loans canceled are in their 60s, 50s, 60s
and 70s.
They have paid vastly more than they borrowed back in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
And so it's not a solution.
But it looks good.
It's great optics.
And the Democrats are going to play the Republicans like a fiddle in the election in the upcoming
election.
Yeah.
In fact, over the weekend, AOC was out on the news talk show saying we need to give, you
know, Biden some credit on you.
I see you got there.
Let's see.
I paid my loans.
Why should I pay for someone else?
That's not on you.
I love it.
Can I handle that?
Yeah.
Jump in there, Alan.
The data is very clear.
People have repaid their loans.
In fact, if you look at the cash flows of the Department of Education, they have been
getting repaid by the people roughly what they have lent out every year, year over
year going back for decades.
So that $1.6 or $7 trillion that we see there, that is largely interest.
And you know, penalties and fees and other things baked into that cake, it's not original
principles.
So unlike PPP loans, for example, which actually were very expensive for the taxpayer,
the taxpayer has broken even on these federal student loans.
And remember, in 1965, when the Higher Education Act was signed and the lending program was
created, President Johnson at that time declared that the loans would be free of interest.
Well, they $100 billion a year is added onto our backs in interest.
And this is something that certainly the Congress of 1965, they did not see this coming.
They had no intention of unleashing this sort of a predatory lending based on the country.
This is what I'd say, Alan, too, and Facebook listener, thanks for the question pointing
that out or whatever that was a protest statement.
But you know, go to studentloanjustice.org and look at the data as you said, you know, lots
and lots and lots of people who quote, took out $15,000 in student loans, paid back $23,000
in student loans, and oh, $50,000 still, I mean, those are real statistics, people who
have paid back more than they originally borrowed and still owe even more than they paid back.
That's right.
The lending system is completely broken down.
And you know, I could tell you many stories, a woman I'm thinking of borrowed $25,000
in the 80s and 90s, she repaid $100,000 and she's still on the books owes $132,000.
So we're really talking about monopoly money here.
And you know, Tim, another thing that people might want to be aware of, that whatever their
opinions are, I know a lot of people love to wag their finger at the college students.
Well, older people out and number younger people with student loans, people over 50 out
and number people under 25 with student loan debt.
But the fact of the matter, and this is not subject to my opinion or anybody else's, today
80% fully 4 out of 5 of all federal student loan borrowers are not making payments on their
loans.
So even before the pandemic, it was close to 3 and 5.
But here now the repayment has begun.
Yeah, 82% of federal student loan borrowers are not making payments.
And even if you don't include the students who are in college, probably shouldn't be paying,
shouldn't be expected to be paying, it's still 78%.
So we're talking about 4 in 5 of everyone is not paying.
So what do you call that?
That is a failed lending program.
I'm going to say that goes back to your original point going, look, the system is a disaster
it's a failure.
The loans will not be paid.
That's a mathematical fact.
The loans will therefore be canceled.
So you just, well, let's go to that, though, too, because you know, on your producer
on you before the show was like, you know, I just, I just graduated in 22.
I'm paying back my loans, you know, and, and, and we said, you kind of said, hey,
on you, just hang out for two to three years.
It's going to collapse on you.
It was like on you, right?
You're like, I said as long as you promise, well, I, you know, I don't, I never, I never
give any advice.
Nobody knows what's going to happen.
This is the Wild West lending systems fail from time to time.
You know, we saw it with sub-brimes and we saw it with other lending instruments and
US history.
So we don't know exactly where this is going to go.
But what I can tell you is that without a doubt, the loans will not be paid by and large.
Loans will be canceled.
Now, whether that happens through, you know, decades long, dystopian, predatory, you
know, feeding frenzy and people's lives are ruined and, you know, suicides and expatriation
and just horrible, horrible things or whether we finally acknowledge the truth and we find
our political spine in Congress and, and with the president.
And we efficiently and sort of effectively replace this lending system with something
that works.
That remains to be seen.
I'm, I'm fighting for that second thing.
I don't want that first thing.
No, we don't.
And, you know, again, Alan Collins student loan justice dot org, the numbers eight, four,
four, nine, six, seven, two, seven, eight, nine, it's busted pencils fully let it education
talk.
The place for blue collar scholars, Alan, we introduced that concept last night.
This is where blue collar scholars hang out and talk about the issues.
It's student loans.
Alan, I said, we've got a big announcement.
We're going to hold it over again.
One more break.
You know, we've got to do our thing like all those other places, you know, teas, teas,
teas, teas.
I'm going to tease away because we've got a big announcement.
You know, but before we even hit that announcement when we come back though, what about student
loan boycotts?
I know those are out there right now.
I know we only have a minute, but you know, people are out there going, you know, what
though I am, when you say people aren't paying, it's largely what you're saying are people
who can't really pay.
They can't do it.
There is a group of lenders out there right now who are actively saying, I'm not going
to pay their boycotting.
We want to understand that strategy.
What it means to boycott.
I can see you got to hold your like ready to jump on this one, but I'll hold you back
for the break.
Alan, Alan Collins, studentlonejustice.org.
It's busted pencils.
It's fully letted education talk, educated educators talking education, student loans back
when we get break back up to the break.
You know, I'm going to let this down and play everybody.
This is one of my favorites.
Sing it, Tim.
Sing it, Tim.
Not me, man.
Here we go, here we go.
That's what we do.
Go to the university, busted pencils, fully letted education talk, hey, maybe if you took
out student loans, you might be living in a little box too after you graduate from college.
Our guest, Alan Collins, studentlonejustice.org, big announcement, holding off though, Alan, I
did want to get a little bit of your take on though, the active boycottters of student
loans, the people that are saying, I am intentionally not paying my student loans because I am going
to get what by doing that.
Yeah, you know, that's more of a concoction of the mainstream corporate media.
You know, they love trouble.
They love a fight.
They love to make the student loan borrowers look bad, it's how it's always been.
And so now, yeah, they're just like they were sort of exaggerating the claim back in
the 70s that everybody was running out and filing for bankruptcy on their student loans.
So to today, they are trumping up these relatively rare instances of people having the ability
to repay but deciding not to repay.
I think that's probably less than even 5% of all borrowers.
You know, the media has been a very dirty player in this.
We could talk a long time about that, but I'll just say that it's been an info war to try
and get the truth out about this lending problem.
And so it's kind of unhelpful to try and paint a student loan borrowers as a bunch of sort
of narrow do well, combative, you know, you know, against the grain, you know, protesters
when, in fact, the opposite is true.
Well, I mean, that's the other part of the reality.
I remember one of our first, first callers when we had you on your, your, your half ago.
So saying like, look, I'm a truck driver with $30,000 in student loan debt, you know.
And in fact, he was saying, you know, this $10,000 forgiveness is could have been monumental
for me.
You know, I'm not a wealthy person who went and studied, you know, not to serve anything wrong,
but I didn't get my degree in basket weaving and gender studies.
You know, I took out money to become a truck driver.
I'm making the American dream possible for lots of other people, a little bit of student
loan forgiveness.
And I think that's the other part of saying, who are student loan borrowers?
You know, 40% of all borrowers never graduated.
First of all, 100% of student loan borrowers had to be financially needy in order to even
qualify for certainly for federal student loans, you know, tens of millions of them went to
community colleges, vocational schools, you know, truck driving schools, like you mentioned.
These are not your liberal elitist, you know, avocado toast, eating, you know, elites
don't get student loans.
Period.
It doesn't happen for them.
Oh, I had to avocado on my toast this morning, but I had a fried egg with cheese on top
of that on top of the avocado.
Oh, Jesus.
You're good.
Okay.
Just want to check.
All right, Alan.
So we've got there.
Now, here's the big announcement.
Check this.
Dude, I didn't, I was like, are you kidding me, but I go to the webpage and I see it right
there.
Collins for president dot com, Alan, you're running for president.
That's right, Tim.
You know, I've been doing the student loan battle for 20 years now, and we had great
hopes in the political process with the, quite frankly, the Democrats that they would
finally do what they had been promising to do for many, many years.
That was last session when we had Biden as the president that had control over the house
in the Senate.
But, you know, as I said earlier, the core of this whole thing is bankruptcy.
And the Democrats and the Republicans, they had a great bipartisan bill that would have
returned limited bankruptcy rights to student loan borrowers at long last.
And at the very last minute, they decided to not pass that bill.
They, they mean both the Democrats and the Republicans, they betrayed us.
So, you know, I was looking forward to maybe getting that bill reintroduced today.
But a month ago, I met with our contacts in the Senate.
And they have no intention of even reintroducing that bill.
And so I was thinking what can I do and, you know, the only thing that I can think of
that could flip the script, change the game, you know, re-roll the dice.
And change the public conversation is to, yeah, run for president so that we can actually
pose a viable threat, not just to the Democrats, but also to the Republicans, you know, more
than half of all student loan borrowers are either Republican or independent.
People don't realize that, but it's true.
And so we're not a spoiler to either party, or maybe you could say we're a spoiler for
both parties.
I could say it.
I could say it.
I could say it.
I could say it.
I could say it.
I could say it.
Well, let's not, I mean, because right now, this is serious, though.
I mean, you are truly running for president because I can't hear somebody right now listening
and going, what's he running on student loan cancellation?
You know, and it's like, well, well, yeah, duh, of course.
You know what you're doing?
There are 43.4 million federal student loan borrowers, that's a heck of a world.
That's a lot of voters.
So a lot of voters.
It's 39 million people who are losing sleep over their student loans.
They were never going to be able to repay them.
That's a huge number of voters, and they span the political spectrum.
And so, yeah, this giant, I would say it's the largest, politically untethered voting
block in modern American history.
And if both parties are going to just completely neglect and betray us, well, somebody's got
to, somebody's got to step into that.
And so that's what I'm doing.
And we're going to get to your other issues.
It's Alan Collins student loan justice, or he's running for president, and we have a
scholar, Jackie, and Texas Jackie.
You were calling what's happening down in Texas, Jackie?
It's a mess.
There's $141 billion of student loans that are owed by 4.5 Texans.
It's outlaid.
Now, all of America needs to get on board and vote for Alan Collins, because he is going
to be there working for us.
But now, the politicians, the rich, they just want to keep funding the rich.
They want the rich to get richer, and they don't care about the poor or the middle class.
So, if we want, you know, if we want any change to come about, we need to get a change
in the house, right?
So, everyone needs to get on board and get Alan in there, so that he can try to save America.
Well, Jackie, we might have lost you there, Jackie.
Thanks for the call.
Thanks for calling busted pencils.
Alan, you got one supporter in Texas.
I appreciate that.
Great.
You know, and Jackie was right.
She knows her stuff.
$141 billion, hanging around the next of the people of Texas.
That's a $9 billion a year.
An interest being sucked out of the people of Texas, of all political stripes, sent to Washington,
DC.
Like, what conservative should be for that?
Like, the governor of Texas should be with you.
Make the conservative argument for student loan, you know, cancellation, get rid of.
Well, yeah, it's stronger than the literal argument, you can say, you know, the federal
Department of Education and the colleges have erected this unconstitutional, unconscionable,
red-state, wrecking, like Texas, a loan scam.
And this thing is sucking huge amounts of unearned wealth.
And if you look at the worst hurt states, it's not Massachusetts or Washington or Oregon
or California.
No, no, no.
If you look at the worst hurt states, it's the entire South from Texas to Florida, up
to Virginia and over to Missouri and everything in between.
Alabama and North South Carolina, Kentucky, these states are being wrecked far worse than
the rest of the union in mostly federal student loan debt.
But no conservative can look at the no-true conservative, can look at this and say, this
is a good thing.
It's not.
And, you know, if people are worried about the colleges, you know, indoctrinating our youth
or whatever the people on the right like to say, well, they've apparently been duped because
as they wag their finger at the borrowers and say, pay your loan, what they're actually
doing is defending and protecting this unconscionable loan scam that benefits the colleges and the
Department of Education, which most conservatives say they want to shut down.
So there's a, there's a very fundamental bad brain thing going on with many conservatives
who have quite frankly been programmed by the media.
Well, there you go, conservatives.
There's your reason to be voting for it.
I think this is LA Tom, right, it's right, LA Tom from Los Angeles, Wisconsin native
originally LA Tom is on the line, LA Tom, how are you, my friend?
Hey, guys, I'm good.
First off, we, the people ultimately are the government and we must never forget that.
We need to decide as a country, and this goes all the way back even with the media, everyone.
Do we value education, do we value education in this country or not?
I look at everything, some small business owner as well, as I look at everything as a
return on investment, and the thing is the return on investment on a college education
or schooling in general or education in general pays you back tenfold.
Much more than drawing a bomb over into a country and let it blow up and give us no redeeming
value whatsoever.
But what I'm saying is that we have to decide what is our priority.
We also need to talk in this discussion about money and politics and how, because of
citizens united, because of Buckley versus the layout and first national bank versus
bloody, we have politicians that now have been bright and it's the only way they can get
into offices with big is with big money.
And that does not, and we need to get money out of politics so we can restore government
back to we the people and get our democracy back.
Because right now you can have two, three hundred thousand people marching outside of the
capital of Madison, and you know what, they just wait you out and wait till our next
donor comes by to pay the bill and put a commercial up that's a lie about someone on the
other side.
In my security fence for the next time, I was going to say Alan Carr gas right there.
Go ahead, Tom.
Finish up there.
The other thing is we have got to learn as a very, very simple concept, the difference
between public versus private and public is about we the people not making a profit.
Private is about a private individual making a profit and if I never understood that concept
really even into my twenties and I'm so happy that I have now because it's such an
important thing.
You always have to make a profit when it's a private organization and the Republicans
and other people that are bought off by the billionaire donors are basically trying to
tear the organ of the public universities and public institutions down.
So therefore they can be privatized and take it over so someone can make a profit.
L.A.
Tom, we love it when L.A.
Tom gives us a call, Alan, what do you think about L.A. Tom there?
And I saw you nodding and agreement a lot there.
I don't think there's anything that he said there that I disagree with and the federal
student loan program is the perfect poster child of how private for-profit enterprises come
in, they capture government and they turn this, what originally was a well-meaning program
to educate the country into a profit center for themselves.
And it's gone so deep with the federal student loan program, the Department of Education
is completely on board with making a profit.
Like where does the government make a profit, does the Air Force make a profit, no, does
the Department of Health Human Services make a profit, no.
No federal agencies make a profit, but the Department of Education makes $100 billion
in profit a year on interest on these federal student loans.
So how would they ever cancel it then if it weren't for the-
Right, and that's what we're up against here.
The lending system has failed, everything I said earlier is still true.
But there is a very strong, I'd say it tends to be Republican, it's greed, it's people
who want to make money.
It's both sides of the aisle, you know, this thing transcends partisan politics.
It's just a very strong greed motivation that gives this lending system very strong roots
in Washington, D.C.
So this is a very, very important battle that we're in.
This is our guest tonight, Alan Collins, student loan justice, org, but Alan, big announcement
tonight, you know, running for president.
And the reality is there, check it out, collegeforpresident.com, you can go there, check it out, you
know, and people are like, what's he running on, student loans, well, yes, but, you know,
I got there, go to the website, taxing the wealthy, reducing spending, securing the
border, growing the economy, healthcare, internet censorship, surveillance data gathering
and privacy, China, foreign relations, election integrity.
And more importantly, you want to hear what the people think.
Alan Collins, thank you for busting pencils.
When we get back, Tim and on you, break it down, busting pencils, back after the break.
We're back, busted pencil, only let it education talk, educated educators talking, education,
it's where blue collar scholars gather our guest tonight was Alan Collins, student loan
justice, org, big major announcement.
He is running for president, people think, well, really, yeah, go check it out.
We said, you know, collegeforpresident.com, you can see it's there.
He's more than about student loans on you.
So there you are, you want, you know, you're the new producer to busted pencils.
You didn't meet Alan before, before you got this gig.
What do you think about student loan justice, org, his organization, did you learn anything
tonight?
I do feel like I learned a lot.
I was really amazed by his statement about, you know, he's right, all these other departments
that the government funds, these things do not end up being profitable.
It's kind of like when people talk about like, hey, we got to fix the local, the public
buses until they're profitable.
And it's like, well, they're never probably going to be profitable.
For service, we provide, because we're sorry, I have to break this to you.
We're a society now.
We have to take care of each other.
I'm so sorry to tell you guys.
So I'm obviously very much for forgiveness.
I'm for the justice part of it.
And I think he's right about the overblown idea that there are people out there who can
pay and are somehow flaunting their choice to not.
My understanding has always been is if you've got money that the government wants, they're
going to find their way to it.
So I'd be kind of amazed if those boycotts exist.
I think it's a lot more people like me who keep having to go back and saying, nope, pockets
are still empty, guys, get off my back, that that's kind of the reality, at least it's
my reality.
And I'm the producer.
So here I am to tell you about it.
And what producer Anya says is always the truth producer Anya, she is always Anya, she's
there.
Okay.
So Anya, now just so you know, one of the things that we didn't really talk about here,
and then this is another issue is that the student loan forgiveness that's occurring
right now and I wanted to get a little bit more of this go in with Alan, but to realize
that a lot of the forgiveness that's happening right now is not really new.
This is forgiveness that should have happened that now all of a sudden the president has decided,
hey, let's enforce the rules that were in place.
And I will point out that as a person, I was one of those people who during the first
public student loan forgiveness that came out in the 2000s up through the two, you know,
I was like, oh my god, I'm eligible.
I was a public school employee.
I taught for, you know, I paid my student loans for upwards of 20 years at that time.
And I was like, I get to apply for student loan forgiveness.
And guess what happened, Anya?
You totally got it.
I, I, I, life, life was awesome ever since it was, it was instant.
I, I, they said, Tim, you are forgiven.
No, they didn't, sorry, Tim, this program isn't for you.
I was like, well, wait, why is it not for me?
It's for people who've been working in public like a teacher like me for 10 years and
paying on their loans for 10 years.
I've been doing it for 20.
How come I don't, sorry, Tim, there's a fine print there that you must have missed.
It doesn't count for you.
Yeah.
And if it's not for you, who's, who's that for, huh?
Yeah, I was like, well, who's getting it?
And so, you know what, though, and at the time I agreed and I said, oh, well, I, I mean,
I begrudgingly agreed, went on my way.
And then I don't know the myth, 2000 teens or, you know, the teens, I said, maybe I'll
give this a try again, you know, because now I had paid another seven years.
And I was like, okay, I've more than done my 10 years.
No, Tim, no, still, it's not for you.
It's, you know, I, we know you've been, you know, a teacher for 20 some years, but no.
And I put this out there for people to hear this because this is what happened to a lot
of people.
So at a point, I said, well, then, you know what, I got a really great offer from a private
debt consulidator that said they could really reduce my payments and my interest rates
and make life a little bit easier for me.
And guess what?
I did.
That's where my loan is now.
And now guess what?
It is never, ever, ever going to be available for forgiveness.
People are sitting there going, well, Tim, you're the dumb person or the dumb butt who made
that stupid decision.
I, I guess, but really shouldn't I be allowed to get what was given to me.
So as, if President Biden is canceling loans right now, what he's really doing and what
Alan said is, is he's canceling all those loans that should have been canceled back in
the early public student loan forgiveness rounds.
Shouldn't I get mine canceled now, though?
I mean, you should.
You've been paying your student loan back longer than I've been alive.
So that's kind of scary.
Like for me to think that that's, that's a whole other statistic that Alan brings up
too.
But you know, people are like, well, you should have never went into the private consolidation.
I'm like, well, but I would have never gone there had I been given the program that was
supposedly available.
And now the president's all about making the program that was supposed to be available
available to people.
However, what about, you know, and so I'm out there looking, you know, potentially occasionally
every so often thinking, could something happen for me one day, you know, maybe I don't
know, maybe people were out there, you know, it's, it's fully let it education talk, some
great collars Jackie from Texas, LA Tom always appreciate LA Tom giving us a call coming
in.
And again, we'll wish Johnny Lupinati were going to see him back tomorrow.
We know we just got a text from him all as well, all is fine.
So anybody who's worried if you, if you're a praying person, Johnny appreciates it, we,
we thank you student loans, though, the topic of tonight, um, forgiveness.
You know, and I said, we said this one thing, though, too, it's like, even the word for
goodness on you when it first came out was kind of like this idea, like you did something
wrong.
Yeah.
You know, it was like, isn't that a problem that it's forgiveness?
You know, you bad person, we're going to forgive you for now, but don't you go be
bad again?
Don't you dare go get another one of those higher educations you're always talking about.
Don't you go get yourself smarter and making yourself a contributing member of this democracy
and participating and having thoughts about things and maybe even potentially reading
books that might offend people and then even becoming a public school teacher.
Oh, busted pencils, fully let it education talk, blue collar scholar.
Go back tomorrow night, tomorrow night to introduction, the women from educator's
amplify, Joanna and Halley are going to be on Wednesday, it's going to be regular
currents.
We look forward to that.
Busted pencils, fully let it see you again tomorrow night.
Busted pencils, fully let it see you again tomorrow night to introduction, the women