Betsy DeVos Continues to Make Paying Back Student Loans a Nightmare

You know that moment on Arrested Development when Lucille Bluth is yelling at Michael for charging G.O.B. for a frozen banana and in the process drops an all-time-classic line: "You’re the one who charged his own brother for a Bluth frozen banana. I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, ten dollars?"

Well, with Betsy DeVos in charge, we basically have what would happen if you transformed that quote into a person and made that quote-embodying person run the Department of Education. And as we've previously covered and covered, there is seemingly nothing that will stand in her way as she makes your student loans as difficult to pay back as possible. And here we are with YET ANOTHER way in which things are about to get harder. She's already stripped away policy designed to protect students from loan companies and made it so you will be putting more of your paycheck toward your debt, but now she's also decided to basically allow a government-sanctioned monopoly to form around student-debt collection.

Right now there are nine different companies that service your government student-loan debt. This, of course, can be somewhat annoying to keep track of, but the great upside is that it prevents one company from having a huge amount of leverage over how loans should be serviced. We know this because there used to be only one company servicing the loans and, well, this is what one expert said to The Washington Post:

“We felt we had little leverage because the whole system was operated by them, and they knew it would be such a huge endeavor to change that, so they didn’t have to be responsive.”

That would be bad enough, but that's not all that's happening. No, with the Trump administration, every piece of news is like an old-school Steve Jobs Apple keynote. So much overwhelming information and yet always "one more thing." In this case, the "one more thing" is the fact that the proposed budget for the department will get rid of...EVEN. MORE. PROTECTIONS.

Have you ever thought to yourself, Man, if only student loans were harder to take care of. I wish companies could screw me without all this "red tape" to protect me. Well, if you have, you're a weirdo, but a weirdo who is in luck, because Betsy DeVos is your gal.

A review of the amended contract solicitation shows the department plans to strip out mandates aimed at helping borrowers who fall behind on payments and people enrolled in income-driven plans. The servicer would no longer be required to have specialists on hand to aid people in delinquency, nor would the company have to remind borrowers to reenroll in income-driven repayment weeks before the deadline.

Okay, so to review. Loan servicing will soon be a monopoly so the company will have no incentive to do its job well. Policies designed to keep you from defaulting will go away, and there will be fewer if any specialists who are there to help you out should you find yourself struggling to pay. It's almost like all of these changes are designed to help a corporation and hurt regular people. Hmmm...interesting how that works.

H/T Washington Post.