September 3, 2015

More facts about this: (from a report published in 2005)

Actually, Mrs. Clinton has a mixed record on the bankruptcy bill, which wended its way through Congress over the course of several years, and on fighting the banks, which are a major constituency and major source of campaign contributions in New York.

The bankruptcy legislation was sought by banks and credit card companies, which wanted to make it harder for consumers to use the bankruptcy laws to walk away from their debts.

As first lady, Mrs. Clinton worked against the bill. She helped kill one version of it, then another version passed, which her husband vetoed. As a senator, in 2001, she voted for it, but it did not pass. When it came up again in 2005, she missed the vote because her husband was in the hospital, although she indicated she would have opposed it.

. . . .


The bill popped up again 2001, which was Mrs. Clinton’s first year in the Senate. She worked with Republicans on it and was one of 36 Democrats who helped it pass the Senate, saying it had been improved from when she opposed it. Still, this version was vigorously opposed by consumer groups and unions, and ultimately did not become law.

More

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/clinton-and-the-bankruptcy-law/?_r=0

The 2005 bankruptcy bill hurt students and former students with student debt really badly because it excludes a broad range of education or student loan debt from eligibility for discharge, that is forgiveness by a bankruptcy court.

This means that a business executive, let's take Trump as an example, can take his corporations into bankruptcy court and either hold the threat of a discharge or forgiveness of the money he owes his lenders, his creditors over their heads until they forgive some of it but a 24-year-old who owes $40,000 in student loans and for some reason cannot pay them cannot get that debt forgiven by the bankruptcy court in most cases. It's much harder for the student to get an education-related loan forgiven by the court than some spendthrift, irresponsible corporation.

To me, that is a perversion of justice.

Students should be able to go to school for free.

Some suggest that students who get the forgiveness of college or post-secondary education debt should have to volunteer or work to pay back the debt. That reminds me very much of the old indentured servitude system when immigrants to America in the early days of our country were indentured servants for a period of time, even years in situations like a sort of slavery that had a predictable end (not meaning to make of slavery less of a wrong, less of a crime, but to indicate the kind of relationship that the indentured servant potentially had with the master for the duration of the servitude. So I think that is not the answer.

To me, the answer is to tax everyone to support state schools and to lower or provide free tuition for state schools.

Bernie is on the right track with regard to student loans in my view.