The last three years of US President Joe Biden's administration have been seen as both an astonishing success and a dismal failure, depending on who you ask. Some see the successful rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, the so-called Bidenomics economic recovery, and the restoration of executive branch credibility as important achievements.
Others point to official rhetoric downplaying the devastating impact of COVID-19 subvariants and the end of pandemic mitigation measures and economic relief efforts, such as child allowances that helped reduce child poverty, as examples of the failure of the administration to address immediate and long-term situations. social and economic issues. Worse, Biden's declaration of unconditional support for Israel and his defense of its genocide along with the resurgence of overt white supremacy reflect the pervasive atmosphere of Trumpism during his presidency.
In their decisions, Biden and his administration do not appear to be all that different from their neoliberal and far-right predecessors spanning the last half century, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
No wonder many Americans lack enthusiasm for supporting a second Biden term. I am certainly among them. I will vote for Biden on November 5, but I will do so with the sincere hope that I never have to vote again for a politician who, more than most, has shaped the disastrous direction the federal government has taken over the last half a century.
As a registered Democrat since I turned 18 in the late 1980s, I should be an avid supporter of the Democratic Party, of Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris. Thanks to them, all of my remaining student loan debt, which I began accumulating in 1987 when I was a freshman in college and had been paying off since I earned my doctoral degree in 1997, no longer exists.
In August, I was one of 804,000 borrowers whose student debt was erased as part of a Department of Education student loan forgiveness initiative. Debt worth tens of thousands of dollars (all interest compounded on my original principal of $41,300) was gone. As of December, the Biden administration has forgiven $132 billion in loans to 3.6 million borrowers.
It is true that I was ecstatic. First of all. Then I lived a few days of sighs of relief, the occasional tear and, later, a little anger.
It was a debt he had struggled to pay for decades and could not discharge in bankruptcy as a result of legislation that Biden, as a senator, had spent years lobbying for on behalf of banks and credit companies. When passed in 2005, the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act closed the bankruptcy option for student loan borrowers.
It was debt I had accumulated while completing my three degrees because financial support through federal grants was limited. This was due to amendments to the Higher Education Act that Biden had also supported that expanded student loans as the primary method of paying tuition for first-generation students from families living in poverty.
While in college, I received a Pell Grant, a federal government subsidy for low-income students, which at the time was equivalent to about $2,200 a year. It covered only about 17 percent of my total college expenses at the University of Pittsburgh and only about 29 percent of my out-of-state tuition. Even after working my entire college years (including one year where I averaged 30 hours a week as a work-study student), I still had to take out $16,000 in student loans. That was just for my bachelor's degree.
Current Pell Grants cover less than 30 percent of college expenses at public institutions of higher education, creating more debt and more risks and limitations for low-income students once they earn their degrees.
As of last fall, more than 43 million borrowers owed more than $1.75 trillion in student loans. Biden's sponsorship of student loan programs, his support for slowly increasing Pell Grant awards that lag behind tuition increases, and his stance toward student loan borrowers seeking relief through bankruptcy have been part of efforts to defund needs-based aid over four decades.
The fact that the president is now trying to repair some of the damage done to the lives of tens of millions of Americans in no way makes up for his role in creating this crisis in the first place. Nor should it mean that any borrower who has benefited should automatically be granted his vote.
I think about what could have been and should have been. Every decision I made in my education had to take into account how much more I would need to borrow to complete my degree. Every decision I made had to take into account this question: Can I afford to pay back these loans?
Decisions like whether I should continue majoring in a practical field like computer science or switch to history, a subject I enjoyed and had an affinity for. Or whether I should take time off from school to work and figure out what I really wanted to do as a writer or just stop doing it and get my master's and PhD while I was still in my twenties.
Or what jobs I should say yes or no to, especially with the conundrum of finding an ethical job in social justice or education versus a job simply to pay off my student loans and bills, eventual car notes, and maybe a mortgage. Or whether I should stay in Pittsburgh with its low, stagnant wages but also low cost of living or move to the Washington, DC area, one of the most expensive places to live in the US but with higher earning potential.
And if and when to buy a house, rent a house or rent an apartment, when to have a child, when to buy a car, if and when to leave a job for something a little better. These were some of the many debt-laden questions and decisions I have faced.
Despite my degrees and middle-class income since 1999, I felt overwhelmed and ended up filing for bankruptcy on my consumer loan debt in 2011. That still didn't eliminate my obligation to pay back my student loans, thanks again to Biden's work on behalf of banking lobbyists in 2005.
Whether I was fully employed or underemployed, I continued to pay or make arrangements to pay. For 25 years, I continued to pay, from November 1997 until my student loan break in July 2022, about $67,000 in total payments. The pandemic pause on student loan payments enacted in 2020 did not initially apply to me because I had originally consolidated all of my student loans.
Being able to pay off my loans at a lower interest rate could have helped me save more money so my son could attend college. It could have been the down payment on a new house. But not having to borrow at all could have made the difference between having a successful writing career in my 20s and 30s instead of my 40s and 50s.
On the issue of student loan debt alone, Biden's work represents the last 50 years of economic stagnation and the rise of the super-rich at the expense of the struggling American middle class and the spread of American poverty. With friends like Biden, a Democrat who works hand in hand with Republicans to keep millions of people in debt for decades, who needs enemies?
Both parts cost me between a decade and 15 years of lost income, lost sleep, and lost opportunities for a quality of life that I can now enjoy after almost all of my younger years. I will only vote for Biden in November because the alternative is even worse. I will do it to buy time for a future without politicians like Biden compromising my life chances.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
