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I'm generally favor of that as well; the problem, though, is that student loans are Federally guaranteed, so any successful discharges would have to get picked up by the government as opposed to eaten by the creditor. The other issue is that when you limit it to a certain dollar amount per borrower it makes it relatively easy to do the math. With bankruptcy you'd have to estimate the dollar value of student loan debt people who filed anyway, plus an additional estimate of the additional filers the dischargeability would attract. Then you have banks who wouldn't like it anyway because these "student loan bankruptcies", by which I mean people filing because of student loans who wouldn't otherwise file, would drag in all kinds of other debts that they would have to eat. One final thing I just thought of is that the moment congress considered making bankruptcy debt dischargeable (I mean seriously considered, as in legislation that has a chance of passing, not one legislator's proposal) it would throw all us attorneys for a loop because now we'd have to advise every client with student loan debt about the possibility of it becoming dischargeable in the near future and have discussion about whether it's prudent to wait. It would also be immediately viewed as unfair by anyone who recently filed before this was an option (and now has to wait 8 years before filing again), though I suspect a long enough lead time would mitigate this.
I think it's much easier if we don't do anything about current loans but just stop making them bankruptcy proof and federally guaranteed in the future. That won't cause any problems
I'd rather it start with 10% dischargeable and then work up to 50% over the course of a decade or so. (with the amount discharged transferred as debt or as reductions caps on annual grants to the given institution the discharged debt came from). 100% dischargeable makes a masters in theater more appealing not less.
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