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Comment by tivert | Hacker News Reader

> It fixes a lot for the people struggling with them right now.

> We need to solve the bigger issue too, but that shouldn't preclude shorter term action to correct past mistakes.

But this plan stretched the law past its breaking point, which why it was struck down. IIRC, the plan would have been OK if Congress had only passed a law explicitly granting the authority to forgive the loans, which it didn't even when Democrats controlled Congress.

IMHO, They'd fix the student loan issue immediately if Congress passed a law to allow the debt be discharged in bankruptcy (but maybe with some kind of delay or different fix to prevent the previous abuses of bankruptcy that led to the current regime), and perhaps added a claw-back from the schools for future government loans.

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There wasn’t really a legal basis for striking this down, because the plaintiffs did not actually suffer damage.

Same for the discrimination case where the plaintiffs had neither suffered damage, nor prior restraint, nor were actually engaged in the line of business in which they claimed to be.

The court is now accepting purely hypothetical cases when it’s convenient for them - this was someone who might start a web business and might suffer adverse action. The action that might be punished hasn’t even occurred yet, let alone any governmental response, nor is their even any bona fide movement towards the action that might be restrained, let alone any indication the government might restrain it.

It’s extremely damaging to our legal fabric to have this double-standard applied across the system. This is calvinball territory, the court is changing the rules of the game for different participants. Different people get an entirely different process based on which group you fall into, and the process difference is so drastic it effectively determines the outcome of the case.

> IMHO, They'd fix the student loan issue immediately if Congress passed a law to allow the debt be discharged in bankruptcy

The law already allows the debt to be discharged in bankruptcy, though it sets more difficult terms than for debt generally.

How were they supposed to pass the law with the filibuster?

Can’t until the republicans are voted out

Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people.

> Disagree, this is a lot of word salad to justify not helping people.

Come on. It's not no "unintelligible, extremely disorganized speech or writing manifested as a symptom of a mental disorder" to disagree with you.

Furthermore, framing this as just about "not helping people" is simple-minded. There are almost always trade-offs between different goods, and maintaining separation of powers is an important good as well. There are serious, serious problems with allowing small provisions of law meant to solve small problems to be re-interpreted to allow the executive to unilaterally make massive policy changes.

You’re the one approaching this like it’s some incredibly complex issue, it’s really not. But okay, let’s play your game. Describe the real material harm caused by this forgiveness. Is it inflation? There’s a lot of research saying that’s bogus. Is it an overstretching of powers? Seems pretty minimal compared to existing powers, and it seems like this is right up the executive and DOE alley… what exactly are you upset with in the real tangible sense? What concrete harms are happening that are backed by data and not just a myopic world view? Please, really, enlighten me

The president cannot seize your assets in order to buy malaria nets for Kenya, even though that would "help people".

I’m having trouble seeing how student loan forgiveness and this are equivalent. Can you elaborate?

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