Borrowers Launch Letter Campaign to 18 Attorneys General Demanding They Stop Blocking Debt Relief, New Investigation Exposes Missouri AG’s Failure to Serve His Own Constituents
October 23, 2024 | WASHINGTON, D.C. — One day before a federal appeals court hears oral arguments on the ongoing partisan legal challenge to the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, borrowers and advocates launched a letter campaign from borrowers to demand that attorneys general stop blocking much-needed debt relief. The effort was led by the AFT, Debt Collective (DC), Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC), Student Debt Crisis Center (SDCC), We the 45 Million, and Young Invincibles. **Update: As of October 31, borrowers have sent 77,000 letters. Borrowers and Missouri AG Keith Ellison also held a press conference outside the courthouse in St. Paul, Minnesota on the harm that these lawsuits have caused borrowers. View a clip here and here and photos here.
Through the letter campaign effort, borrowers are sending letters to the 18 attorneys general who have filed lawsuits against the Biden-Harris Administration warning about the costs and consequences of the partisan attorneys general lawsuits. The letter campaign is ongoing.
In addition to the letter campaign effort, SBPC and DC released an investigative report revealing that hundreds of borrowers from Missouri repeatedly contacted Missouri Attorney General (AG) Andrew Bailey, pleading for him to stop his effort to drive them deeper into debt. Missouri AG Bailey systematically ignored these pleas, instead prosecuting lawsuits against these borrowers’ financial interests in courtrooms across the country, including the case being heard before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow. A copy of the report, MO Borrowers, MO Problems: How One MAGA Attorney General Tried to Break the Student Loan System and Drive His Own Constituents Deeper Into Debt, is available here: https://protectborrowers.org/mo-borrowers-mo-problems/
Advocates also gathered powerful borrower stories about the importance of debt relief and how these lawsuits have harmed borrowers. See a quote sheet of borrower stories here.
From the stories:
“I will never understand how Attorneys General like Andrew Bailey and other partisan AGs can use their elected positions of power to actively hurt student loan borrowers like me. Student loan borrowers are Americans. We are servicemembers and veterans. We are taxpayers and we are constituents. It is long past time that these partisan AGs stop their attacks on working families like mine,” said Alicia Barnes, a borrower who has been harmed by the SAVE litigation.
Background
The SAVE plan is the newest payment plan created by the Biden-Harris Administration to help make millions of borrowers’ monthly payments more affordable and provide a shorter timeline for cancellation. It sets borrowers’ monthly payments based on their income, resulting in low or even $0 payments for low-income borrowers. Of the over 8 million borrowers who have enrolled, 4.6 million have a $0 monthly payment.
However, this past spring, a cadre of 18 states filed two separate lawsuits over the legality of the SAVE plan. The 18 states include KS, AL, AK, ID, IA, LA, MT, NE, SC, TX, UT, MO, AR, FL, GA, ND, OH, and OK. Since the lawsuit was filed, borrowers on the SAVE plan have been placed into a non-interest bearing forbearance that does not count toward cancellation under Public Service Loan Forgiveness or Income-Driven Repayment. For several months, borrowers were unable to access online applications for consolidation and Income-Driven Repayment. Because of the chaos caused by these cases, borrowers have limited options for repayment at this time.
Further Reading
Debt Collective piece in Medium showing that the SAVE plan maximizes profits for MOHELA, allowing the student loan servicer to receive fees without any risk of suffering financial losses: The Missouri AG Is Wrong: Biden’s SAVE Plan Helps — Not Hurts — MOHELA
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