
1) There's no better way to immediately put a little more money in the hands of people who need it most, and will spend it immediately.
2) A huge portion of the student loan debt now crushing people was taken when student loans were able to be discharged in bankruptcy. Then, years later, the companies that make these loans -- at virtually no risk, and with VERY high profit rates -- gave enough money to Congress to buy themselves a change in the law to prevent student loans from being discharged in bankruptcy. In other words, the rules of the game changed in a crucial way AFTER people had taken these loans.
3) Kneecapping young people with huge debts might feel good in a "you oughta pay your debts" way, but it's penny wise and pound-foolish. One of the reasons our economy is struggling is that young people cannot afford to start new ventures, because they have huge loan payments to make.
We need a total rethink of our system for financing higher education, one that makes the colleges and universities have a lot more skin in the game. Right now, the student loan business is a lot closer to loan sharking than it should be. A jubilee (debt forgiveness) would not only help millions now, but it would also give us the opportunity to start over with a much more far
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Thank you for signing the petition to Forgive Student Loan Debt as a Means of Economic Stimulus! Thanks to so many people sharing, posting, emailing and tweeting, as well as MoveOn.org's promotion of the petition, nearly 400,000 people have signed it! There's absolutely no doubt that we're making waves and getting noticed, but this campaign is really just beginning. There's more work to be done!
Today, I'm asking you to take a few moments of your time to remind those who purport to represent us in Washington that we truly care about this issue and that we're not going away!
Therefore, I'm asking everyone to please call your Senators and Representatives in Congress TODAY and ask them to support H.Res 365 and the efforts of Rep. Hansen Clarke with respect to student loan forgiveness.
Signing a petition is one thing, but flooding the Congressional switchboard with calls from every state in the nation and from all political stripes and backgrounds is quite another. It's extremely important to remind Congress that there's a human being behind every single one of the nearly 400,000 signatures we've obtained thus far, and that every single one of them is truly suffering under the weight of their student loan debts, preventing them from spending, starting businesses or families and buying homes - the very things we need middle-class and working-class Americans doing right now to help re-build the economy that was nearly destroyed 3 years ago.
To quickly and easily find out who your Senators and Representatives are and to obtain their D.C. office telephone numbers, please click here.
Then, simply type in your address and/or zip code and 3 names should immediately pop up - your state's two Senators, as well as your Member of Congress. Call all three at their D.C. offices today and implore them to listen to the voices of the American people who are speaking up loudly on the issue of crushing student loan debt.
To whatever extent possible, please try to stick with calling their Washington, D.C. offices so as to make the greatest impact possible. If we can jam up the Congressional phone lines - all the better!
Thanks again for all of your help in making this petition such a huge success! Let's keep the momentum building!
Sincerely,
Rob Applebaum, Esq.
Founder, ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com