Student Loan Repayments

Why is asking someone to repay their loan so controversial?

By Chuck Warren

A tweet out today sums up my feelings on the Trump Administration requiring adult borrowers to repay their student loans:

"It baffles my mind that after 42 months of interest free extensions 5.3 million people are in default on their student loans" ' @Blind-Luck

According to a quick google search, there are "approximately 42.7 million Americans have outstanding federal student loan debt. This figure represents about 12.5% of the U.S. population." Hence, with 5.3 million in default, that means less than 10 percent of student loan borrowers are in default.

Now we have the national media publishing garbage such as this from ABC News:

"Collections on millions of student loans risk slowing the economy, experts say."

The left wing propaganda piece states, "The Trump administration’s plan to begin collecting defaulted college loan payments from millions of borrowers risks contributing to an economic slowdown at a time when the U.S. faces an elevated risk of a recession, some experts told ABC News.

Roughly 5 million borrowers will have their loans sent for collections beginning on May 5, the U.S. Department of Education, or DOE, said this week. Another 4 million people are in late-stage delinquency, meaning they could face collections within a matter of months.

Under the plan, the federal government will garnish wages from some of those borrowers, pulling money out of their pockets that may otherwise be spent and in turn drying up some economic activity, the experts said."

We can all agree that repaying a loan we agreed to is never a pleasant experience. It becomes part of our monthly budget which I am sure we all prefer to spend that money on other things.

What all of the accounts of hardship miss is that SOMEONE has to pay these student loans. Why?

"The U.S. federal government owns the vast majority of student loan debt, specifically around 92%. This means that most student loans are directly held by the government, while the remaining portion is held by private lenders. As of early 2025, the total outstanding federal student loan debt was estimated at $1.64 trillion."

That is right, if these delinquent borrowers who took out the student loans do not pay them back, one way or another the U.S. taxpayer -- their neighbor - has to pay for it.

Actually the federal government had to borrow to make the loans! Uncle Sam is not like your benevolent grandparents who saved money all their lives and had this money sitting in a savings account. The federal government had to borrow money. Which means they believed in the borrower — they invested in the borrower — with the belief they would be a responsible adult and pay it back.

This loaned money is part of our national debt. You know the BIG economic issue that Democrats supposedly care so much about.

So, the "federal student loans are a significant component of the national debt.The federal government borrows money to fund student loans, and when the amount of funding for new loans exceeds the amount of repayments from existing loans, the government must borrow the difference, which adds to the national debt."

Thus the the Biden-Voter-Buying-Scheme for student loan forgiveness would have had the government effectively cancel the debt and, depending on the accounting methods used, this can have an immediate and/or long-term impact on the national debt.

I do not hear any Democrats talking about this point.

So that leaves us with one question: Are you ready and willing to increase your taxes to repay the debt of a college student who signed on the dotted line and took the loan out?

Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.