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Comment by andrew_ | Hacker News Reader

makes me wonder if student loan default en masse could follow this time.

How would that work? I thought most US based student loan can't be defaulted on.

Defaulting just means you have not made required payments for a certain period of time (270 days for student loans), so anyone can default.

It can't be discharged through bankruptcy (thanks Joe!), but neither can we squeeze blood from stone. Debtors who don't have the funds to both eat and make their payments will not make their payments.

I assume that by Joe you mean Joe Biden?

Student loans haven't been something you can discharge in bankruptcy since the 1970s. If you want to thank a US president (as opposed to, say, the legislature that actually passes these laws), you should be thanking Gerald.

Bu Biden said he would change this. And he did not. And in fact he is actively fighting them in court.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/02/17/biden-st...

You can still discharge private student loan in bankruptcy until 2005, when a new bill pass to prohibit it. Joe Biden was one of the Democrats voting for it (as a member of the legislature that passed the law). The GP was probably referring to this

They are probably referring to then Senetor Joe Biden and his support for the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, which substantially broadened the set of student loans that could not be discharged in bankruptcy.

Joe Biden was a legislator for 38 years. He probably doesn't remember every bill he sponsored, but it's not as though he didn't choose to sponsor them.

I'd really like to know why this is getting negged. Student loan debt is a massive number, and if significant numbers of people simply stopped paying, it going to have a major toll.

Student loan debt has been in de facto default for awhile now in terms of collecting the interest payments. So we already "know" the impact that would have. It also CANT be defaulted in the sense of extinguishing the debt, because the government will just garnish future wages and earnings, including social security checks.

Interesting. I wasn't aware it'd been in a state of default. What's a good resource to get up to speed?

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