You are conflating, or possibly just confusing, deferrment and cancellation with forbearance. These are three separate procedures; the link to the Department of Education website in the post has good explanations of all three.
Loan account holders *can* use the new ruling as a basis for asking the Department of Education to authorise garnishing borrowers' SSI and SSDI checks. Again, the website can explain this better than I can. Furthermore, if the account holder decides it's not worth the effort on their part to try to collect a now-disabled borrower's outstanding student loan, responsibility for/ability to do so devolves to the government -- which is the sort of situation which could well affect me, with the two loans for which I submitted a complete and qualified cancellation packet that the bank left in limbo rather than processing.
His disability was not a contributing factor to him not paying the loans back. He simply wanted a free ride.
That kind of attitude and language are not welcome in this journal. Please feel free to exercise your freedom of expression elsewhere if you cannot comport yourself like a decent human being.
Regardless of James Lockhart's repayment history and his reasons for not repaying his loans before he became disabled -- and neither you nor I know whether he qualified for deferrment or forbearance, nor whether he applied for authorised periods of non-repayment, much less whether any such applications were handled properly, and there's actually nothing in the coverage I've seen which rules out his having been granted deferrment, forbearance or even cancellation at some point -- he is, right now, trying to live on less than $900 per month, in a city with a high cost of living, while also continuing to manage two serious life-threatening illnesses. If you think he should just move someplace more affordable, I earnestly encourage you to research handicapped-accessible subsidised housing availability in Washington state, or even in your own area; the waiting lists are long, and the lower the cost of living in an area, the fewer services (like medical transportation, and paratransit for going to the store to get groceries) tend to be available for disabled people. Diabetes management is expensive; there are testing supplies, there is medication, there is a more expensive diet that must be maintained.
Should Mr Lockhart lose his sight, or his legs, or his life, so that a few thousand more dollars can disappear into the massive, 8+ *trillion*-dollar federal debt that the United States has accrued, of which over 300 billion dollars was added by the budget deficit last year alone?
Consider, also, that the Court authorised no more than 15% of Lockhart's Social Security income be garnished. He's 67 years old now. It would take over fifty years for his $77,000 worth of student loans to be repaid through garnishment. If he only lives to be 74 (the average life expectancy for males in the United States) -- and surely he's less likely to live even that long if he has to choose between food, medical care and housing -- and his checks are garnished at the fifteen percent rate for the full seven years until his death ends any further possibility of collection, that would recoup for "the tax payer" barely more than a tenth of the student loans he has outstanding.
Granted, I'm no expert in cost-benefit analysis, but I can't see how any amount of money -- much less the amount, insignificant on any larger scale than James Lockhart's monthly budget, that could actually be taken from him -- is worth crippling or killing a human being.
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timeasmymeasure
A-hem.
Date: 2005-12-08 11:33 pm (UTC)Loan account holders *can* use the new ruling as a basis for asking the Department of Education to authorise garnishing borrowers' SSI and SSDI checks. Again, the website can explain this better than I can. Furthermore, if the account holder decides it's not worth the effort on their part to try to collect a now-disabled borrower's outstanding student loan, responsibility for/ability to do so devolves to the government -- which is the sort of situation which could well affect me, with the two loans for which I submitted a complete and qualified cancellation packet that the bank left in limbo rather than processing.
His disability was not a contributing factor to him not paying the loans back. He simply wanted a free ride.
That kind of attitude and language are not welcome in this journal. Please feel free to exercise your freedom of expression elsewhere if you cannot comport yourself like a decent human being.
Regardless of James Lockhart's repayment history and his reasons for not repaying his loans before he became disabled -- and neither you nor I know whether he qualified for deferrment or forbearance, nor whether he applied for authorised periods of non-repayment, much less whether any such applications were handled properly, and there's actually nothing in the coverage I've seen which rules out his having been granted deferrment, forbearance or even cancellation at some point -- he is, right now, trying to live on less than $900 per month, in a city with a high cost of living, while also continuing to manage two serious life-threatening illnesses. If you think he should just move someplace more affordable, I earnestly encourage you to research handicapped-accessible subsidised housing availability in Washington state, or even in your own area; the waiting lists are long, and the lower the cost of living in an area, the fewer services (like medical transportation, and paratransit for going to the store to get groceries) tend to be available for disabled people. Diabetes management is expensive; there are testing supplies, there is medication, there is a more expensive diet that must be maintained.
Should Mr Lockhart lose his sight, or his legs, or his life, so that a few thousand more dollars can disappear into the massive, 8+ *trillion*-dollar federal debt that the United States has accrued, of which over 300 billion dollars was added by the budget deficit last year alone?
Consider, also, that the Court authorised no more than 15% of Lockhart's Social Security income be garnished. He's 67 years old now. It would take over fifty years for his $77,000 worth of student loans to be repaid through garnishment. If he only lives to be 74 (the average life expectancy for males in the United States) -- and surely he's less likely to live even that long if he has to choose between food, medical care and housing -- and his checks are garnished at the fifteen percent rate for the full seven years until his death ends any further possibility of collection, that would recoup for "the tax payer" barely more than a tenth of the student loans he has outstanding.
Granted, I'm no expert in cost-benefit analysis, but I can't see how any amount of money -- much less the amount, insignificant on any larger scale than James Lockhart's monthly budget, that could actually be taken from him -- is worth crippling or killing a human being.