Wednesday, May 3, 2023

So now what?

 MOHELA is Missouri's state-created higher education loan authority, and the supposed financial harms it would suffer under the student debt cancellation plan are critical to the right-wing officials' case. If the Republican plaintiffs can't prove that MOHELA—which is not itself a plaintiff in Biden v. Nebraska—would suffer concrete harm from student debt cancellation, their case falls apart.

According to the new report by the Roosevelt Institute and the Debt Collective, not only would MOHELA not be harmed by the Biden administration's student debt relief plan—it would actually see its direct loan revenue rise if the plan is enacted.

"Our new research examining this claim suggests that MOHELA's year-over-year revenue from direct loans will actually increase substantially, even after debt relief," the report states. "Assuming President Biden's proposed cancellation goes through, we estimate that MOHELA will service more than twice the number of accounts it serviced at the beginning of the Covid payment pause. It will also earn nearly twice as much revenue servicing federal direct loans as it has in any year prior to cancellation."

The groups said their findings were bolstered by internal MOHELA documents that they obtained through a public records request. MOHELA's "own internal impact analysis," the report notes, "shows it would make more revenue the first year after cancellation is processed than it did in 2022 or any prior year."

"The entire premise of the lawsuit against student debt relief rests on the idea that 43 million student debtors shouldn't get relief for which they were already approved because one of the corporations contracted by the government to collect student debt, and thus the state of Missouri, will be financially harmed in the process," the report concludes. "Our analysis reveals this assertion to be false. In contrast, MOHELA will earn higher revenue than ever before, even after cancellation is administered—contradicting the plaintiffs' argument and calling into question their claims to standing."


--from this article.

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