you. you can go ahead and start calling him now. those phone lines are a bit different. go ahead and start calling and as we bring in via zoom a senior reporter with the "chronicle of higher education." good morning to you and think you for joining us early. how does this plan work and who qualifies? guest: almost everybody who took out federal student loans is going to qualify. i think 90% or something of borrowers will see relief. for most people who borrowed recently, the financial department has your financial information on file and will work to forgive your loans, up to $10,000 of your loans. if you had a pell grant all you are in college, if you are low income and qualified for that, you will get to up to $20,000. that means to save you have an outstanding balance of 9990 five dollars, that will all be wiped out, assuming this policy goes through. that is a big assumption at this point, because there are likely to be court challenges. host: for those who don't know, what is a pell grant? guest: if you are low income, you come from a low income family, you can get up to $6,500 per year to attend college. that is a grant. it is free money and you don't have to pay it back. the president, i think, decided that the government should provide extra loan cancellations to those folks because those people have a harder time in general. they have lower college completion rates and tend to exit college with more debt. host: how are people supposed to claim this debt forgiveness and when are we expecting it to kick in? guest: like i said, if you went to college recently, the department is saying they have the financial aid information of about 8 million of the roughly 45 million people who have outstanding student loans. for the rest of the people, if you want to qualify, you are going to have to apply to the department for some kind of income verification. that process remains to be seen how that works. it is not clear whether they're going to have these financial data from when you were in college or if they have to go to the irs or something like that. you can go to the department's website, sign up to be notified about that process, and when it is ruled out -- when it is rolled out sometime next month. what are the expected costs? guest: i have seen estimates around $250 billion. that is going to vary quite a bit. i think it is early days and we are not sure about have any people. if a bunch of people end up not signing up and taking advantage of this, obviously the cost will be lower. host: what is your expectation here about who benefits the most from this? guest: there has been a lot of speculation about that, but largely it is going to be people who are low income. there is a cap on this, so if you are currently earning as an individual hundred one $5,000 or more, or a family with $250,000 or more, you do not qualify for this program. the department is estimating that most all of the borrowers will be earning $75,000 or less. that is middle income. i think those people would think of that as middle income territory. we know, for instance, that low income borrowers take out small amounts of loan and don't finish their degrees. those of the people most at risk for having -- for defaulting on their student loans. those people will be most helped by this, certainly, because at least, they are saying maybe 20 million borrowers, will see their loan balances wiped out completely. those are largely going to be low income minority people who had academic or financial challenges in college and did not finish. host: and you did allude to this a little bit earlier. is there a legal challenge coming here? can you challenge executive action like this? guest: i am sure a lot of folks are going to try. there is a lot of pushback to this. it is an unprecedented action. the education department has been forgiving loans from for-profit colleges or students were defrauded or under the college loan forgiveness program, something like $32 billion in loans have already been canceled. the department has pretty clear authority under those areas. this is different. it is new and different. the apartment is -- the department is citing a 2003 act that allows the president, the government to pause student payments for service members, for instance. that is the authority they have used to, for instance, that both president trump and president biden have used to stop repayments. the student loan pause will go on until the end of the year. but no administration has ever tried this before. certainly, there's going to be questions about it. the real issue as i understand it is whether any person or group will have standing in court to challenge this. it is sort of up in the air. i think it is a political question. if republicans take control of congress in the midterms, could they file a lawsuit against the administration for this? that seems like a strong possibility. host: that is eric kelderman, tracking the ins and outs of all issues related higher education. it is chronicle.com if you want to follow him. i appreciate you getting up early this morning and bringing us up to speed. >> no problem. host: that is the announcement from the president. we mostly want to hear from you, your reaction. phone lines are split a bit differently. if you have student loans, if you have paid your student loans, and all others. we are starting north carolina, had his student loans. how much, if you don't mind saying? caller: oh, man, i have two masters degrees. i incurred a lot of money. it was 125 thousand dollars, i think. but with the interest, and i/o a widower, and i have two kids now in college. host: what does this do for you, this $10,000? caller: i am waiting to see the paperwork. they said it will probably come out in weeks to come, from october to january. i am waiting to see what happens and how i can fill out the paperwork. right now, i have these deferred . it is too much money. some of this can't be taken away from me, so i still have these obligations to pay them, but i have incurred a lot of debt over time. it is hard to go to school. it was very costly, and these laws have made college affordable, so people are looking at barriers. right now, you can go to community college for free. we did not have that option. host: what do you do with your two masters degrees? caller: i am a health care consultant. i help people in health care organizations, as well as the operator of a health care company. host: how long do you think it was going to take you before yesterday to pay off that 125 thousand dollars? caller: well, that has been the issue. he brought up some very important issues. you can't go out and get other loans because of the debt. you can't buy houses or buy cars without them looking at that debt. but i have tried to get the loans for being a nurse practitioner, because i have taken all the prerequisites. i have paid that out of my pocket, to get the prerequisites to go and be an rn, a nurse practitioner, a physician's assistant, looking at institutions. host: thank you for calling to talk about it this morning. don, newport, rhode island is next. go ahead. caller: when you borrow money, you are morally responsible to pay it back. period. you know what your responsibility is. you know how much you've got to pay back. i put my daughter through college. i paid all her bills, other than her masters, which she is paying off. i put my daughter through i don't know what the president is thinking here. he is giving away trillions of dollars and that's not enough. we have to give out billions of dollars. last night, i saw on the news putin saying the student loan debt reduction is a good deal, but it is not enough. what is enough? there has got to be some response ability on these borrowers. that is all i have to say about it. host: mobile, alabama, this is bill. good morning. caller: good morning. i just can't understand why people sign the contract and will not pay them back. what is with that? what is with obama he? >> obama is the one that caused this. he took us out of the banks and put this in the government. that is where the big black hole is. our country is going to hell. and nobody gives a rat butt. thank you. host: the line for those who have student debt, how much do you have, david? caller: i will tell you my idea. what i am calling for is i went into the service. i am a veteran. you can go to school if you serve your country and they will pay for it. i did that. i raised my children, i worked a job. i worked an eight-hour job, went to school, got an education, paid my bills. i do not think anyone should be allowed to forgive debt. when i go to the v.a., i make so much money, they say, that i have to pay a co-pay. [laughter] i served my country and this is good? our so-called president is a joke. he is the worst thing i have seen since jimmy carter and i was with jimmy carter, and he was a joke. for a man to step up there and say that students should be forgiven their loans, i would like to know how many of these loans are for americans or for other people. this should not happen to america. if you take out something and you have put your word to it that you are going to do this, you should to mitt to your word, it not be like these other people who sit in an office and tell you one thing, and it is a lie. joe biden, you are going to make it good. what have we got? we have got more hate and distrust going on. we have a government that is split, that will not adhere to what the constitution says. we need to clean house. host: that is david in north carolina. robert in pennsylvania, good morning. you are next. caller: good morning. how are you? host: doing well. caller: good. i appreciate the person who spoke. i support veterans all the time, a number one priority. he made a point, but i just want to ask the question, who is going to pay for this? host: robert, who do you think is going to pay for this? caller: i'm not sure. that is why i'm asking. the administration, basically, it is the taxpayer. i am 56 years old. i never went to college. the gentleman was right. when you make a card -- when you make a contract with a creek our company, you pay it back. when you go to college, you sign a contract, that is what you owe. i heard a jammin before and said he has two masters degrees. i have built houses for a living for 38 years. i have made hundreds of thousands of dollars that having a college education. so, if he hasn't been able to pay back those loans, those two masters, what are they doing for him he? joe biden was talking about how it is harder to go to college, but that gentleman made the point that you can go to a free college today to get an education. education today, for me, sir, is common sense. just using common sense. at a job that pays well and you are good at. my life has a masters degree and a bachelors degree. she worked for rolling stone magazine for 35 years. she makes great money. the point i'm trying to make his justice. if you're going to go to college and sign on the dotted line, pay your responsibility. i will leave you with one last comment. i want my money back, sir. the money that the administration is sending to ukraine, because i another also roast -- another -- i never authorized my money to go to a country for a war we are not involved in. i would rather go to the veterans, police officers, ents, -- emts, and possibly the homeless like in california. caller: got your point, robert. just your point there, the news yesterday, in case you missed it, the u.s. pledging another $3 billion to ukraine to combat russia. that new a package coming yesterday from the white house. president saying, "today and every day, we stand with those to show that the darkness is no match for the light of liberty." robert, in his statement, asking the question, "who is going to pay for this new student loan forgiveness plan?" this is what the president had to say about who is going to pay. pres. biden: there is the inflection -- the inflation reduction act that will pay for this many times over. i will never apologize for helping americans, working americans and middle-class. especially to the same folks who voted for a $2 million tax cut that benefited the wealthiest americans and biggest corporations, that slowed the economy, didn't do a whole hell of a lot economic growth, and wasn't paid for, and racked up this enormous deficit. i will never apologize when the federal government for gave almost every single cent of over $700 billion in loans to several hundred small businesses across america during the pandemic. no one complained that those loans caused inflation. a lot of these folks and small businesses are working and middle-class families. they needed help. it was the right thing to do. the outrage over helping working people with student loans, i think, is just simply wrong. dead wrong. host: biting yesterday from the white house. getting your reactions to this plan to forgive thousands of dollars in student loans for millions of borrowers. this is lamia out of maryland. good morning. are you there? then, we will go to jan in virginia. caller: hi. i am calling from virginia. i have almost $70,000 in student loan debt, so i am happy that i could qualify for the $20,000 forgiveness. i'm happy that the president is doing this, because that is the main reason why i voted for him. i was kind of disappointed when he kept saying that he was not going to do it. i think probably the main reason he is doing it now is because the midterms are coming up and maybe with everything going on, that is probably why he is going ahead and doing this student loan forgiveness, i just want to say that this make me very happy and i probably will vote for him again. host: people want to know, $70,000 for what kind of degree and what do you do? caller: my agree is into counting -- is in accounting, and i went for my masters. now, i am an applications analyst. i am really in i.t.. i'm not even doing accounting. host: how did you -- how long did you think it would take you to pay off $70,000 in student loan debt? caller: i felt like this was going to take me my whole life. honestly, i didn't think i was ever going to be able to -- i feel like i will never be able to pay it off. even if i get the $20,000 forgiven, it is still $50,000 that i/o. it will probably still take me years. i'm a single mom and i have kids. about that one caller who called earlier, saying he didn't go to college and doing construction, not everybody can do a skilled job. some of us do have to go to school and get degrees and things like that. not everybody can do jobs where you work with your hands. i don't think that is fair for people to say that you shouldn't go to college because i didn't do this. not everybody will do construction, go down that same path. i don't like that people say it's not fair or say they paid theirs off or paid off early. the cost of living is high, apartments are high, houses are high. we need help. that is all i wanted to say. host: terry on the line for those who have paid off student debt in their lifetime. eugene, oregon. good morning. caller: good morning. it is nice to talk to you this morning. let me mention some names out there. carol miller, $3.1 million. brett guthrie, $4.3 million. laverne buchanan, $2.8 million. one of those three names, just three names in common, they are all republicans, and they all got ppp loans and they were all forgiven. all my! did we have a segment on that? did c-span do a segment on that? on the republicans with their ppp loans? host: we have 20 seconds on that. so, you support move yesterday? caller: oh, very much so. i am mostly calling in because i am really, really sick of thinking the set up today this morning, the people and citizens are constantly being put in battle with each other. i am tired of it. i'm tired of the way this program is run. you constantly are doing the dirty work of the gop. i know you get calls all the time about how you haven't got the phone lines, you never switch the number and all this stuff. gosh darn it, it is so frustrating because he could've run this so much different this morning and had it be with a positive reach out, but you don't do that. you never do that. host: we are just asking people their reaction to it. how would you reframe the question? what would you have done? caller: to be truthful with you, i haven't given that much thought to it. i would not want to come off-the-cuff because i'm not very good at that. i am not a producer and i'm not in the business, although that was what mike degree was going to be, in telecommute occasions and film, with a women's studies minor. it was at the university of oregon and i started college, i am 73 years old now, and i think i started when i was 50 years old. i became disabled and the department of education for gave my $33,000 loan. i was very, very grateful. i have spent the rest of my life being so grateful for that. it would have some commander so badly, but that is what is going on with president biden. i know there's a lot of collars that the talking points are all the people that have already paid off their loan. you know, what about all the people that got it -- i am sorry. host: appreciate you sharing the story. we want here for more people talking about the public policy issues of the day. that is what we try to do today and everyday on this program. in this first hour, we are talking about the announcement yesterday on this student loan program -- forgiveness program, president biden, and how it is being framed on the left and right sides of the aisle. student loan forgiveness infuriating. right until millie -- bidens hail mary for the midterms. president biden pouring student loan debt gasoline on the inclusionary fire. bidens student loan relief plan is a big deal. a couple of stories, depending on where you go for your media. this is oral in kissimmee, florida. good morning, you are next. caller: good morning. i am probably calling a little bit too early, because i'm just hearing the conversation and i wanted to wait longer because many times i have called c-span and i tell the people that america needs to change because they call themselves a christian nation. i read the bible and i know the jewish system, every 50 years, they gave a jubilee which for gave debt and they didn't complain and cry or so forth. but then, jesus came up with a system that was even better than that. he tells us that he gave a parable. somebody who started working in the crisp part of the day, that he hired someone in the middle part of the day, then hired someone for the last hour of the day, but he paid them all the same wage. these bumper sticker christians that call in and complain about this, they need to stop calling themselves judaism christians and act like the pagans they are. have a great day. host: this is jack in davenport. morning. caller: good morning. i have paid off my student loans. my loan was for 3% interest. this whole mess is because of the interest rates and the trouble that was caused there. congress had their financial tricks and they said no more bankruptcy, better let the bankers to run up the bill, and the republicans just loved that. my son mike borrowed $10,000. his wages have been garnished for $10,000. because the interest rates blew up, it ignores when the loan was taken out. how much is already been paid back? if you borrowed something 30 years ago and you never had any pell grant, what good is that $10,000 bonus forgiveness? it is the interest rate problem that has been ignored, and biden is not addressing that. host: that is jack in iowa. this is kyle in new york. good morning. caller: good morning. that last color raised a point there that i was going to touch on, with the interest rates. i am paying for my kids's college right now. i feel bad for the people who paid off their debt. my personal story, i went into default around 2002. i owed about $30,000 in loans. at the time, i was young. i couldn't afford to get that loan out of default, so they garnish my wages for about four years. they wanted about $900 per month to get myself out of default, which i couldn't. about three or four years later, the loan went from $30,000 to 65 thousand dollars with penalties and fees. i have no problem paying what i/o, but i don't think these institutions should be making that much within three or four years. $30,000, $40,000? i think that is the reason why we are getting bailed out. it should be more than $10,000. it is the situation where we bailed out the banks, we bailed out everybody, people are crying about so-and-so, i didn't do this, but i mean, come on. there are people who have had student loans for the last 30 years or 40 years, who have been paying, but cannot pay off the dollar amount because of the interest and fees, they are going through financial hardship now, they have to do some type of repairs, and the interest rates keep going up. no it is not fair to those who paid. i'm trying to do the right thing by paying my own kids's. that is my story. host: thank you for sharing your story. we are about halfway through this first hour of washington journal. spending this time getting a reaction. president biden's announcement yesterday about student loan forgiveness plans. we mentioned reaction from across capitol hill. here is some of it via twitter. thomas massie, the republican from kentucky, the congressman saying that many are upset about the student biden loan giveaway, but they don't know that if you restructure or consolidated your loan in order to keep up with payments, it is possible now that a third party holds the debt and you will be eligible for student loan forgiveness. jason smith of the budget committee, a republican ranking member there, right in student loan cancellation is just another bailout for the wealthy, just like giving wealthy americans a $7,500 subsidy to buy an electric vehicle. washington democrats are a party of the wealthy elites, not the working class. instead of putting a band-aid on the problem and passing the buck, they should be giving students and parents a true picture of their costs upfront. from the other side of the aisle, a democratic congresswoman from california saying the student loan debt crisis in this country impacts the ability of so many in my district to afford to live in our city. everyone deserves access to a quality, of horrible education. student debt should not be a barrier to achieving the american dream. then, this joint statement yesterday from the senate majority leader chuck schumer and democratic senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts, saying the positive impacts of this move will be felt by families across the country, particularly in minority communities. it is the signal most effective action a president can take on his own, to help working families and economy. this action, along with a pause on federal loan payments, interest, and collections, will move forward economic security, allowing them to invest in their families, save for emergencies, and pay down other debt. they ended by saying that no president or congress has done more to relieve student debt and help millions of americans make ends meet. speaking of elizabeth warren, it was c-span's howard norton who got into the c-span archives and found this from the 2020 campaign trail, the interaction between elizabeth warren and somebody who had showed up to meet her at one of her events in iowa. [video clip] >> one question. [indiscernible] you are going to pay for people who didn't save any money and those of us who did the right thing get screwed. of course you did. [indiscernible] he made more than i did. i worked a double shift, work extra, my daughter works. [indiscernible] that is exactly what you're doing. [indiscernible] host: that is from january 2020. that interaction picked up by c-span, as we cover those events every midterm, every presidential election. the c-span cameras following around candidates. c-span.org is where you can go to find our archives, with hundreds of thousands of hours of video that you can search. diane in mantua, ohio, good morning. you are on the line for those who have student debt. caller: good morning. i appreciated the last few colors as well. i do have some debt left. i have done as much as i can and i will wait until the end of the year to see what happens. the interest rate, we really need to deal with the cost of college to begin with. those who say not everybody needs a college degree, that is true, but i am glad that my position has one -- my physician has one. and they have to have a way to go to college. finally, when people are screaming that it is not fair, what is not fair for me is that i am paying for people who have beautiful beach houses that get wiped out in hurricanes and i have to pay to repair those or replace those. i can't afford those. that is partially why. i think we really need to think about a lot of things. just because i went through whatever i went through in my life, do i want to put that burden onto buddy elsie? -- somebody else? i don't think so. i made more as a massage therapist than i could ever make it a social worker. it is the same with teachers paired we don't pay teachers enough. then, they have to pay out of their own pockets to supply their classrooms. it is ridiculous. so, rather than beating one another up, because we are all fighting for the bottom rung of the ladder, let's look at the people at the top, what they are doing, the games they are playing. and the way that we bailed them out constantly. every now and then, we should get a morsel. thanks so much. host: out of georgia, this is susie. good morning. caller: good morning and think you so much for letting me speak. i have two items to bring to your attention about this. i look past this student loan forgiveness and it is many focusing on the low cost for colleges. you get free college education. you mean like they do in europe? however, if you look at the program of free college, you will find that there are a lot of stumbling blocks to be able to go to college. the boxes you have to take off to be able to be allowed to go to college, those things nobody is talking about. complaining about the banks making money on the interest of those loans. what about the universities and the fact that every time you turn around they are upping the cost again and again. just like with the electric cars. you buy a new electric car, $4000 upn

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