Earlier this month, President Donald J. Trump submitted his proposal for the United States’ 2020 Budget. This proposal includes cuts to various student loan forgiveness programs such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness amongst other programs.
Executive Director of Financial Aid Susan Swisher states, “The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) is a program for students that forgives the remaining balance on a student’s Direct Loan after the student has made 120 qualifying monthly payments under a qualifying repayment plan while working full-time for a qualifying employer. A qualifying employer is defined as a United States federal, state, local, or tribal government or a not-for-profit organization.”
According to Swisher, if these budget cuts occur, it might affect students as well as the university that if budget cuts were to happen students would be required to pay the full amount of their loans.
This is an important distinction to note as the decision of what happens to these programs comes from the government and not the university.
Another thing to consider though all of this is whether or not these cuts will last as these are currently just proposals and there is a lot to consider when it comes to the budget making process.
Political Science Department Chair, Dr. Matthew J. Costello mentioned how the budget making process is very complex.
The first thing to happen is the president proposes a budget by the first monday of February.
The budget then goes to Congress which will look over the budget first in committees composed of members of both chambers of Congress.
While the budget is in these committees, it goes to various subcommittees made up of exclusively members of the House or the Senate respectively.
After much deliberation, they will then agree on it in the Senate and the House separately. By April 15, the House and Senate must both pass a resolution. The next phase of the budget making process is to have everything finalized by September 30. This is because the fiscal year starts on October 1.
This is brought up because there is a very high likelihood of these proposals not making it to the final budget as Dr. Costello says, “[Student loan forgiveness] is the kind of thing that is very likely to go away in the House and Senate. Congress is very unlikely to let this go through unless it becomes something they want to use as leverage or a political weapon. I don’t think it’s high stakes enough to do that.”
That last part is in reference to whether or not this might have any impact on the election with the budget being finalized only a little over a month before the November election. He adds, “At this point, I have a hard time making predictions about elections.”
When asked if there was anything that Swisher would like to let the students at SXU know about this, she states, “There are a number of proposals in President Trump’s budget proposal that include caps to student borrowing [for] graduate students and parent of undergraduate students, elimination of the subsidy for Direct Loans for undergraduate students, changes in repayment options, level funding for the Pell Grants, cuts [to] the Federal Supplemental Opportunity Grant and cuts to the Federal Work-Study Program.”
Swisher continued by saying, “Congress will now begin consideration of the proposals. Historically, 90 percent of these proposals coming from the president never pass. However, we will continue with our advocacy for financial aid on behalf of the students at Saint Xavier University.”
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