Today’s Binary Response is in response to this article by Sarah Reber and Sarah Turner a few days ago over at The Brookings Institute about the future of federal student loans.
I want to start by saying that, as a contract worker who graduated from DePaul University in 2013, I’ve carried federal student loans in my name—and had several in my mom’s name as well. Since graduation, I’ve been on an Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plan. The loans in her name were discharged about a year before she passed in 2019, after she became disabled and relied on our family to oversee her care.
Because of my experience managing both sets of loans, I’ve paid close attention to the changes President Trump has proposed—starting before his second and, thankfully, final term.
Instead of responding to an editorial, I chose to reflect on an informational article. In my view, the federal student loan system has always been complicated and hard to navigate.
In their article, Reber and Turner outline the SAVE plan, signed into law by President Biden, which benefits borrowers with undergraduate loans. But since I was already on an IDR plan, I wasn’t eligible to switch when SAVE launched in 2023.
What really caught my attention was a point they made later: While well-designed income-driven repayment plans can act as insurance in the event of unexpectedly bad earnings, not all weak (or strong) outcomes are unpredictable. Insurance weakens the incentives to avoid the bad outcomes. When borrowers don’t expect they will need to repay all of their loans if their earnings are low, they may choose to borrow more than they expect to repay.
That hit home for me. Between 2014 and late 2019, my siblings, aunts, and I oversaw the care mom was receiving after she suffered a serious stroke. And a good amount of my student loans were in her name, cosigned by my aunt, and enrolled in the same IDR plan as the loans in my name.
The system has always felt like a maze. Honestly, if my mom hadn’t had that stroke, I might’ve left contract work years ago and taken a full-time job with loan forgiveness benefits. My debt might be gone by now. But life played out differently. Her loans were fully discharged seven years ago, and I have the government documentation showing it was permanent due to her disability. Since she’s passed, I don’t believe there’s any policy that could ever require me or my aunt to repay the nearly $200,000 in my moms name.
Now, as for the loans in my name: if it weren’t for the confusion around her loans and the dozens of phone calls I made trying to get those loans discharged, I might never have learned about IDR plans. I probably would’ve walked away from working on contract work full-time around 2014 and taken a traditional job just to stay afloat. But through those calls, I discovered I qualified for a $0 monthly payment based on my income—and I’ve been on that plan for over eight years.
Here’s the thing, folks: I disagree with almost everything President Trump is doing, especially his proposed changes to the federal student programs. That said, I do believe he’s trying to simplify the system and make it more accessible for future borrowers.
With that… It’ll be interesting to see what parts of his plan actually become law—and how they’ll impact current borrowers like me, still carrying tens or even hundreds of thousands in federal student loan debt.
If you’re not one a politician, then ask yourself: Do you support what they are doing?