Advocacy 101: Help Pass The Simplifying and Strengthening Public Service Loan Forgiveness Act

Some of you might be aware that student loans are a big issue for me. Enough that I’ve become a wee bit of an expert of the weird laws and policy (failures) around the student loan system. Well I am here with a little bit of hope and a request for help.

This could be you lobbying for student loan fixes, but you playing.

Senators Whitehouse and Merkley have introduced Senate Bill 4345, the “Simplifying and Strengthening Public Student Loan Forgiveness Act.” It’s a great bill! Among its provisions it would permanent instate the current temporary payment plan waivers (which means that people who were purposely screwed by their servicers by being put into the wrong payment plans won’t be penalized). Importantly, it halves the time for forgiveness from 120 monthly payments to 60 payments for Public Service Workers, Non-profit employees, Teachers, and Military members. This means that instead of slogging through 10 years of payments, these low wage workers can have their debt forgiven in five.

Here’s some information about the bill including bill text.

What you might not be aware of is that I do some advocacy work for mental health in my state, and I’m going to teach you what we do to help pass bills in the hopes that you will also show your support for S 4345.

First off - never underestimate the power of a phone call or email. So the quickest way to support is to call or email committee members while the bill is in committee.

S. 4345 has been referred to one committee thus far - Health, Education, Laborand Pensions. You can find out who is on the committee here and their contact information. Also on Senate.gov.

If you want to give this bill a chance, please call members of this committee and say that. Politicians also love personal stories, tell them about your struggles with your loans, your work in non-profit or other qualifying employment, and how it would improve things for you, your family, and community. Tell them about a teacher you know that helped you, or a social worker, or a clinic worker who would benefit. This sounds terrible, but the more the sob story, the better, play up your struggle and the struggles of others under student loans.

You don't have to be a constintuent, but if you are point that out. If you are part of any organization, group, clubs, professional league, etc, point that out too.

For the love of all that is good, do not avoid calling the republicans on the committee because you think they will vote no. Call everyone. Have your friends and family call.

Here's a sample script:

“Hello, my name is ____ and I live in (state). I am calling to express my support for Senate Bill 4345. I would like Senator ___ to vote to pass it when comes through the committee. [Here is where you add personal stuff, what this means to you, your community, your family. How this will impact you positively. Or about how bad student loans are. You don't have to hit every point, but be clear and sincere]. I look forward to seeing how Senator___ votes. Thank you for your time. “

They may ask for your contact information, some offices prefer to sign you up for their newsletter or will follow up with their policy position. 

Some things I plan on pointing out is that non-profit workers have comparitively low incomes, but high student loan debt. This high debt-to-income ratio means they often don’t have adequet credit to do things like get a mortgage, refinance debt, get low interest rates on new debt, etc. Having them wait ten years for forgiveness means that its ten years before they can do things like buy a house or start a family. It’s ten years of paying higher interest on things because of these credit barriers.

I’m also going to point out that a lot of people that work in non-profits are from disadvantaged populations, (disabled, come from poverty, etc.) who aren’t comfortable pursuing new or neccessary education because of the heavy burden of student loans. Ten years is a long time for these people to wait for forgiveness, a quicker turn around will help encourage them to pursue education that will help them in their careers.

This whole thing, admittedly, feels like a pain in the ass, I know. I also know so many of you are dissillusioned with the democratic process. But I promise you, the reason why crappy laws get passed is because people make calls, they email, they are generally pains in the ass to our representatives and that gets things done.

Be the pain in the ass you want to see in the world.