Democrats’ plans for student debt cancellation vary between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 per borrower, and CNBC reported that the lower number would cancel all student debt for about 33% of federal borrowers; and that the higher amount would end student debt for 80% of borrowers.
Sinclair’s misleading report from correspondent Angela Brown, who was strongly opposed to the cancellation of student debt, broadcast absurd comments from a man named Matt Noyes. Noyes called the cancellation of student debt “unfair” and shed light on the burden of student debt – talking about his “sacrifices” of making his own coffee instead of going “to Starbucks every day. Because if the federal government is going to take the note, why not. The Sinclair report failed to mention that millions of Americans delaying the creation of a family or the purchase of a house due to the burden of student debt.
Brown mistakenly presented Noyes as just “a graduate of the University of Albany” who paid off his student loans. But according to his author profile At the Mises Libertarian Institute, Noyes works for the Japanese Conservative Union, the Japanese counterpart of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the Right-Wing Conservative Political Action Conference each year. (By the way, the JCU is directed by an influential figure in a Japanese cult.)
Brown then cited the Conservative National Taxpayers Union to counter claims by Democrats that canceling student debt would help the economy. But economists and other experts say student debt relief would be beneficial. Moody’s Economics vice-president, William Foster, told NPR that even the partial cancellation of student debt would have significant results for the economy and help reduce growing income inequality. According to Business intern, an article from Bard College’s Levy Economic Institute estimated that canceling student debt “would result in an increase in GDP of $ 86 billion to $ 108 billion per year on average.” Business Insider and a CNBC special report on the cancellation of student debt also noted many other benefits.
Finally, Brown turned to the right-wing Campus Reform organization, which is funded by conservative dark money groups and often publishes shoddy daily articles alleging teachers’ prejudices against students or conservative policies. These messages laden with disinformation from Campus Reform – which also compiled contact information university professors to facilitate harassment – sometimes lead to violent threats against them.
Brown cited this organization as saying that canceling student debt would only push colleges to raise tuition fees even more, completely ignoring the role that a lack of government funding plays in increasing tuition fees. Like CNBC reported, a comprehensive report on the tuition increase from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated that “limited state funding has contributed to rising costs for colleges.” Michael Mitchell, lead author of the report, told CNBC that “almost every state has shifted responsibility for funding higher education from the state to students in the past 25 years.” Josh Bivens of the Institute for Economic Policy also told CNBC: “Policymakers have cut funding for higher education, and these cuts have been offset by huge increases in tuition fees, forcing people to take on more debt.” Bivens said the cancellation of student debt was “a reward for a series of bad policy failures.”