About That Evers Guys

... or - why you wanna be real careful with that Line-Item Veto thing.

Wisconsin’s Democratic governor guts Republican tax cut, increases school funding for 400 years

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed off on a two-year spending plan Wednesday after gutting a Republican tax cut and using his broad veto powers to increase school funding for centuries.

Evers angered Republicans with both moves, with some saying the Democratic governor was going back on deals he had made with them.

He got creative with his use of the partial veto in this budget, which is the third passed by a Republican Legislature that he’s signed.

Evers reduced the GOP income tax cut from $3.5 billion to $175 million, and did away entirely with lower rates for the two highest earning brackets. He also used his partial veto power to increase how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425.

Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425.

Evers, a former state education secretary and teacher, had proposed allowing revenue limits to increase with inflation. Under his veto, unless it’s undone by a future Legislature and governor, Evers said schools will have “predictable long-term spending authority.”

“There are lots of wins here,” Evers said of the budget at a signing ceremony surrounded by Democratic lawmakers, local leaders, members of his Cabinet and others.

Wisconsin governors, both Republican and Democratic, have long used the broad partial veto power to reshape the state budget. It’s an act of gamesmanship between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that are largely immune from creative vetoes.

Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson holds the record for the most partial vetoes with 457 in 1991. Evers this year made 51.

In 2000, voters prohibited what was known as the “Vanna White” veto, which allowed governors to strike individual letters within words to create new meaning. And eight years later, the constitution was amended again to outlaw the “Frankenstein veto,” when the governor at the time struck words in two or more sentences to create a new sentence.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020 struck down three of Evers’ partial vetoes as being too broad, but the justices could not agree on standards to guide future vetoes. The court flips from a conservative to liberal majority in August.

Republicans blasted the latest vetoes.

Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said allowing the school revenue limit to increase effectively forever would result in “massive property tax increases” because schools will have the authority to raise those taxes if state aid isn’t enough to meet the per-pupil cost. He also said scaling back the tax cut put Wisconsin at an economic disadvantage to neighboring states that have lower rates.

“Legislative Republicans worked tirelessly over the last few months to block Governor Evers’ liberal tax and spending agenda,” Vos said in a statement. “Unfortunately, because of his powerful veto authority, he reinstated some of it today.”

Vos did not say if Republicans would attempt veto overrides, an effort that is almost certain to fail because they would need Democratic votes in the Assembly to get the two-thirds majority required by state law.

Republicans proposed tapping nearly half of the state’s projected $7 billion budget surplus to cut income taxes across the board and reduce the number of brackets from four to three.

Evers kept all four brackets. The remaining $175 million in tax cuts over the next two years are directed to the lowest two tax rates, paid by households earning less than $36,840 a year or individuals who make less than $27,630. Wealthier payers will also benefit from the cuts but must continue to pay higher rates on income that exceeds those limits.

Evers was unable to undo the $32 million cut to the University of Wisconsin, which was funding that Republicans said would have gone toward diversity, equity and inclusion — or DEI — programming and staff. The budget Evers signed does allow for the university to get the funding later if it can show it would go toward workforce development and not DEI.

Evers previously threatened to veto the entire budget over the UW cut. But on Wednesday, he used his partial veto to protect 188 DEI positions at UW that were slated for elimination under the Republican plan.

Another of Evers’ vetoes removed a measure that would have prohibited Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care. The governor accused Republicans of “perpetuating hateful, discriminatory, and anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric” with the proposal.

Evers ignored a call from 15 liberal advocacy and government watchdog groups that had urged him to “fight like hell for our collective future” and veto the entire budget, which they argued would further racial and economic inequality.

Evers said vetoing the entire budget would have left schools in the lurch and meant rejecting $125 million in funding to combat water pollution caused by so-called forever chemicals known as PFAS, along with turning down $525 million for affordable housing and pay raises for state workers.

No governor has vetoed the budget in its entirety since 1930.

The budget also increases pay for all state employees by 6% over the next two years, with higher increases for guards at the state’s understaffed state prisons.

Good Government

We're constantly bombarded with nonsense about how government is always bad and can never be good because it's always getting in the way of free enterprise and blah blah blah.

5 people are dead - 4 of them were paying customers who stupidly (IMO) gave $250,000 to some jagoff with an out-sized ego, expecting him not to cut any corners, and to take good care of them.

Suckers.

‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Points to Flaws in Titan Sub’s Design

The “Titanic” director and diving expert said he’d had concerns from the start about the vehicle’s hull composition and claims about its network of hull sensors.

James Cameron with short white hair and a dark shirt stands next to a green scale model of his Deepsea Challenger diving vessel.

“We’ve never had an accident like this,” James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday.

Mr. Cameron, an expert in submersibles, has dived dozens of times to the ship’s deteriorating hulk and once plunged in a tiny craft of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess.

In an interview, Mr. Cameron called the presumed loss of five lives aboard the Titan submersible from the company OceanGate like nothing anyone involved in private ocean exploration had ever seen.

“There’ve never been fatalities at this kind of depth and certainly no implosions,” he said.

An implosion in the deep sea happens when the crushing pressures of the abyss cause a hollow object to collapse violently inward. If the object is big enough to hold five people, Mr. Cameron said in an interview, “it’s going to be an extremely violent event — like 10 cases of dynamite going off.”

In 2012, Mr. Cameron designed and piloted an experimental submersible into a region in the Pacific Ocean called the Challenger Deep. Mr. Cameron had not sought certification of the vessel’s safety by organizations in the maritime industry that provide such services to numerous companies.

“We did that knowingly” because the craft was experimental and its mission scientific, Mr. Cameron said. “I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified.”

Mr. Cameron strongly criticized Stockton Rush, the OceanGate chief executive who piloted the submersible when it disappeared Sunday, for never getting his tourist submersible certified as safe. He noted that Mr. Rush called certification an impediment to innovation.

“I agree in principle,” Mr. Cameron said. “But you can’t take that stance when you’re putting paying customers into your submersible — when you have innocent guests who trust you and your statements” about vehicle safety.

As a design weakness in the Titan submersible and a possible cautionary sign to its passengers, Mr. Cameron cited its construction with carbon-fiber composites. The materials are used widely in the aerospace industry because they weigh much less than steel or aluminum, yet pound for pound are stronger and stiffer.

The problem, Mr. Cameron said, is that a carbon-fiber composite has “no strength in compression”— which happens as an undersea vehicle plunges ever deeper into the abyss and faces soaring increases in water pressure. “It’s not what it’s designed for.”

The company, he added, used sensors in the hull of the Titan to assess the status of the carbon-fiber composite hull. In its promotional material, OceanGate pointed to the sensors as an innovative feature for “hull health monitoring.” Early this year, an academic expert described the system as providing the pilot “with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”

In contrast to the company, Mr. Cameron called it “a warning system” to let the submersible’s pilot know if “the hull is getting ready to implode.”

Mr. Cameron said the sensor network on the sub’s hull was an inadequate solution to a design he saw as intrinsically flawed.

“It’s not like a light coming on when the oil in your car is low,” he said of the network of hull sensors. “This is different.”

Quit Hoggin' It

We've allowed politics and economics to combine so that, if left to continue on its merry way, it will most certainly lead us to full blown plutocracy.

Wealthy people are so fat with Power Coupons (ie: dollars - thanks, Beau), they've become accustomed not just to getting their way on issues like tax policy, but using their out-sized influence on government to control large pieces of public property so the rest of us are left standing there with our dicks in our hands.

I'll say it again:

Rich people are not required in order to form a more perfect union. In fact, when left unsupervised, they become the very thing that prevents it.

Colorado corner-crossing property legislation poised for comeback following Wyoming ruling
Colorado Rep. Brandi Bradley wonders if she should revive corner-crossing legislation after Wyoming judge dismisses civil trespass complaint against hunters

A Wyoming federal judge has ruled four hunters did not trespass when they stepped over fencing that met at the corner of public and private property.

The seemingly obscure case involving the hunters and a wealthy landowner in Carbon County, Wyoming, has been closely watched by public land advocates hoping for clarification of the murky corner-crossing issue. Corner crossing is when a person steps from one parcel of public land to another at a four-corner point where private and public land meet. Private property advocates — and the owner of Wyoming’s 22,045-acre Elk Mountain Ranch east of Rawlins — argue corner crossers are trespassing in private air space above their land.

The question of trespassing in that air above private land is the crux of the debate over corner crossing. It’s an important issue. The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has identified 9.5 million acres of federal public land in the West that are “corner locked” and inaccessible to the public.

“Landowners have 5,000 acres next to 5,000 public acres that aren’t accessible and they want the whole 10,000 acres and that’s not fair to the people paying taxes for that public land,” said state Rep. Brandi Bradley, a Republican from Littleton, who said her “phone has been blowing up” since Wyoming’s U.S District Judge Scott Skavdahl issued his decision last week.

Bradley in February offered legislation that would allow public land users to freely walk between corners of public land by eliminating the possibility of trespassing charges and prohibiting landowners from fencing corners of their land that meet public property. Lawmakers in Wyoming, Montana and Nevada have attempted similar legislation to no avail. Bradley’s House Bill 1066 eventually ended up as a bill creating a task force to study the corner-crossing conundrum in Colorado.

Now she’s wondering if she should stick with the task force plan or return next session with the same bill and try again.

“We need to come up with some sort of position on corner crossing in this state,” she said.

The corner-crossing Wyoming hunters were acquitted of criminal trespass charges in an April 2022 trial and the ranch owner sought more than $7 million in damages in the civil trial.

Judge Skavdahl, in his decision, ruled there was no evidence that the hunters’ “airspace intrusion caused actual damage to or interfered with the plaintiff’s use of its property.” He ruled that while owners possess the air space above their land and can exclude people from that air space, “that right is not boundless.”

The judge ruled that when a person crosses from public corner to public corner on land owned in a checkerboard pattern without touching the private land and without damaging the private property “there is no liability for trespass.”

“In this way, the private landowner is entitled to protect private-owned land from intrusion … and privately-owned property from damage while the public is entitled its reasonable way of passage to access public land,” Skavdahl wrote in his ruling. “The private landowner must suffer the temporary incursion into a minimal portion of its airspace while the corner crosser must take pains to avoid touching private land.”

Backcountry Hunters and Anglers has collected more than 4,000 signatures from its members in support of legal corner crossing. Tim Brass, the state policy and stewardship director for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers said Colorado’s public land users of all political persuasions are eager for “a meaningful public access legislative solution” to corner-crossing challenges.

“I know Rep. Bradley remains committed to leading this charge on this effort and I think the people of Colorado deserve a solution that reflects the judge’s ruling, which was based on existing federal law.”

She Got Close

Rampell dances right up to the edge of it, but stops short of identifying what I think is the real problem. ie: Republicans are deliberately fucking things up.

They don't want the government to work.

If government works - if we're allowed even to think in terms of "good government" - then their project fails.

Opinion

After breaking itself, Congress tries to break the rest of government, too

The GOP House’s debt-limit-and-spending-cuts bill does a lot of things to sabotage the basic functions of government. It decimates spending on safety-net programs. It creates more red tape to block Americans from accessing services they’re legally eligible for. And it makes it harder for government to fund itself in the first place.

But perhaps the most destructive, least noticed part of the bill is a provision that would force virtually all federal regulatory machinery to grind to a halt.

Tucked into Republicans’ debt-limit-ransom bill is some legislative language that has been kicking around Capitol Hill for a while, known as the Reins Act. If enacted, the law would prevent “major” agency regulations — somewhere around 80 to 100 per year — from going into effect unless Congress first approves each and every one.

To be clear, under current law, Congress already has the ability to rescind regulations it dislikes. This new bill would essentially change the default, so that no major regulation could take effect before Congress gives its blessing.

This change might sound reasonable. After all, tons of American problems have been dumped at the feet of executive branch agencies (guns, immigration, health costs, etc.). It would be great if federal lawmakers got more involved in trying to solve literally any of them.

But if you think about how Congress actually functions (or rather, doesn’t), you’ll realize this is not an earnest attempt to get lawmakers to roll up their sleeves and conquer the Big Issues. It’s about throwing sand in the gears of the executive branch so that no one can solve any issue. Ever.

There are two main reasons Congress currently delegates certain regulatory issues to executive branch agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration or the Securities and Exchange Commission.

First, some policy questions are technically challenging. What amount of arsenic in the air is “safe”? What should be the technical standards for mammography equipment? How should the Volcker Rule be implemented in practice? As talented and hard-working as congressional staff are, they might not have the time or expertise to make informed decisions about such minutiae. Agency scientists or other subject-matter experts are tapped to weigh evidence, solicit input from the public, hold hearings, etc., to execute the objectives Congress has enacted.

The second reason is political.

There are plenty of policy questions that Congress has technical capacity to resolve but might prefer not to. Maybe lawmakers can’t come to an agreement within their caucus. Maybe they know that whatever they choose to do will be unpopular.

So: They punt, and make it some other government functionary’s problem.

For example, Congress has been unable to pass significant immigration reform in more than three decades, leaving the executive branch to address migration-related problems in sometimes legally tenuous ways (see: the legal limbo of so-called dreamers, or former president Donald Trump’s unfunded border wall). Congress has all but abdicated many of its basic responsibilities to other branches of government, such as passing a budget, setting tariffs and deciding on abortion rights.

Or, you know, making sure the federal government doesn’t default on its debt. Apparently even some Republicans are now rooting for President Biden to direct Treasury to mint a new $1 trillion platinum coin to pay off government expenses or adopt some other deus-ex-machination.

Now, are all the rules and regulations put into place by the executive branch perfect, or even good? Obviously not.

But it’s hard to see how inserting Congress into the tail end of the process — given that Congress can barely pass a bill to name a post office — will make our already convoluted, protracted regulatory process better. Instead, it might block any major rule change from happening ever again.

And before my libertarian friends start celebrating the new laissez-faire utopia that awaits, note that the GOP bill would make it harder to deregulate, too. Or to update old regulations when technological change or other new economic conditions warrant. Any significant rule change, in any direction, would require congressional debate and approval.

The GOP’s bill could also create even more regulatory uncertainty, as University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley pointed out.

Agencies might decide not to invest the years, resources and public engagement required to produce new regulations, given that the fruits of their labor might never get through Congress. As a result, regulators might switch to less transparent and ultimately more arbitrary methods for assessing corporate behavior. For example, they might move toward making decisions case by case, rather than laying out crisp, clear rules. That would make it more difficult for businesses to figure out how to reliably stay on the right side of the law.

In other words, apparently not content with breaking Congress, Congress now wants to break the rest of government, too.

A Thought

Republicans voting against raising the debt ceiling is the perfectly Trumpian thing to do.

1. Commit to the funding
2. Let people start planning - or start actual projects
3. Renege on the promises and don't follow thru when it's time to settle up
4. Pretend it's "the ethical thing to do"

It's a way the GOP can fuck with our heads.

ie: "We fucked up the government so you could see how the government's all fucked up. You need to keep us in power so we can go ahead and tear it all down and start from scratch, because - well, because it's all fucked up, dontcha see?"

GOP backdoor fuckery.

They need to get rid of that stupid rule so politicians can't use it to torpedo everything a year after the fucking budget was passed.

If you put a budget in place, then you've already made the commitment to pay for it when the time comes. It should take extraordinary action to change that budget after the fact.

Which brings it back to:

Trump did not remake the GOP in his own image. He's the perfect reflection of what that party has been morphing into for decades.

Don't Fuck With Katie

In one of her milder moods - which come up when Republicans manage not to be lying sacks of shit about every-goddamned-thing - Katie Porter shivs the GOP for gaslighting us about how it's awful at the border in all places, at all times.

House Oversight Committee hearing 03-07-2023

After all the squawking they've done about "Biden's failure to secure the southern border", I'd like to know what took the Trumpsters so long to get the dogs trained up.

And also too, I think maybe the blindly devoted Supply-Siders aren't the ones we need looking for solutions that have to include the Demand Side.

Just a thought.

East Palestine Update

Obama put safety regulations in place for trains carrying HazMat, and then Norfolk Southern lobbied successfully to get them scrubbed when Trump was POTUS.

Ohio Republicans own the Governorship, a 2-to-1 edge in the Congressional Delegation, super majorities in both houses of the state legislature - and the Mayor of East Palestine is Republican as well.

But somehow, when something like this happens - almost exactly what Dems and liberals warned us would fucking happen - then we hear that passive shit ("mistakes were made"), and the shittier shit about how the poor pitiful folk in rural America have been ignored and dismissed by squabbling politicians on both sides.

Sick to fucking death of that fucking shit.

At least for now, people in East Palestine are mad at the right people, but the question remains - will they make the connection to the dumb decisions they've been making when it comes to voting for the assholes who actually don't care about what happens to them?

‘Evacuate Us!’ Fear and Anxiety Boil Over as Residents Confront Train Company on Derailment

As a representative for Norfolk Southern tried to apologize and outline its recovery efforts, residents shouted over him at a meeting in East Palestine, Ohio, demanding that the company “do the right thing.”

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — Frustrations boiled over on Thursday night in the largest public confrontation yet between the people of East Palestine and the operator of the freight train that derailed nearly a month ago, with angry residents in an emotional town hall lashing out at the lone representative from Norfolk Southern who took questions at the meeting.

As Darrell Wilson, a top government relations official for Norfolk Southern, tried repeatedly to apologize to the community and outline the company’s recovery efforts, residents interrupted and shouted over him, demanding that he commit to getting them out of the area, and that the company “do the right thing.”

“We are sorry,” Mr. Wilson said. “We’re very sorry for what happened. We feel horrible about it.”

“Evacuate us!” one person yelled, over Mr. Wilson’s apologies. “Get my grandchildren out of here!” another man yelled. “If you care about us, get our grandkids out.”

Standing before Mr. Wilson and an assortment of environmental, health and political officials in the auditorium of East Palestine High School, residents vented and pleaded, describing how their families were still living in hotels or experiencing lingering health problems, including repeated vomiting and rashes.

They told the officials how they felt trapped, with few resources to move away from the homes they had spent their lives building, and demanded more answers about the validity of the testing done on their air, water and soil.

Norfolk Southern had abruptly pulled out of a previously scheduled meeting last month, citing unspecified threats to officials.

The fiery clash underscored how deeply anxiety and mistrust still run in East Palestine, a town of about 4,700 people, after the derailment on Feb. 3. The decision to burn the train’s cargo of vinyl chloride and other chemicals in order to avert the threat of an explosion heightened fears in the community about the long-term consequences of chemical exposure, and the meeting on Thursday night appeared to do little to assuage them.

Earlier on Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency said it had instructed Norfolk Southern to test for dioxins, toxic pollutants that could have formed after the chemical burn-off. And last month, the E.P.A. issued an order that not only demanded that the company pay for all cleanup associated with the disaster, but also required that it “attend and participate in public meetings at E.P.A.’s request” — including Thursday’s town hall.

But the continued discontentment with both the rail company and government agencies was evident just minutes into the meeting.

“Why did you wait so long?” one man yelled out as Debra Shore, the E.P.A. regional administrator, explained the February order and the requirement to test for dioxins. As the director of the Ohio E.P.A., Anne M. Vogel, reiterated that testing of the water had yet to show high levels of contaminants, another woman yelled out: “What about private wells? We’ll just stay here and die.”

And as E.P.A. officials reiterated that dioxin testing had begun, people yelled out, “Start now!” and “It’s too late!”

Dioxins can cause cancer, interfere with hormones and cause damage to reproductive and immune systems, according to the E.P.A. While the toxic pollutants are already present in many environments — they can be byproducts of burning fuel, among other things — the E.P.A. has been working for decades to reduce their production.

Ms. Shore also said the agency was working to approve a plan that would remove the railroad tracks, as well as the contaminated soil underneath. And she acknowledged that the derailment had upended homes that had been there for generations, pledging that her agency and others were committed to the recovery effort.

“We owe it to everyone, to everyone affected by the Norfolk Southern train derailment, to ensure that you continue to build those roots, that future generations can continue to proudly call this area home,” she said. “That is what E.P.A. is working toward. And we will not be leaving until you are satisfied.”

It is Norfolk Southern that has faced the largest barrage of demands and intensifying scrutiny from lawmakers and officials, who are furious over not only the derailment, but also the consequences of the decision to burn off some of the toxic chemicals carried by the train.

Mr. Wilson, the company representative, repeatedly struggled to speak over the angry crowd on Thursday, even as he pledged that Norfolk Southern would continue to support the community and that it had signed a lease in the town.

“They're sending a representative because they’re scared,” said Courtney Miller, 35, who lives about 100 yards from the derailment site, she said. “They’re scared because we’re mad, we’re upset.”

“These people care, and I can’t leave them,” she added, her voice choking up. “So I will stand here and stomp my feet and be as loud as I can, until somebody does something and gets these people out of here. It’s not safe.”

While the company’s chief executive, Alan H. Shaw, separately made a trip to meet with local officials and some railroad employees last month, some residents were disappointed to not be able to confront him on Thursday.

At one point, someone in the crowd could be heard asking, “Where’s Alan?” Another person passed out T-shirts mocking the company’s logo, rebranding it as “Nofolk sufferin” and replacing the logo’s horse with a broken train.

Candice Desanzo, 43, who came to the meeting with her 1- and 2-year-old sons, said she was worried about their health and determined to speak to Mr. Shaw directly.

“If I did somebody wrong, I’m going to stand up and I’m going to face my wrongs,” she said. “And I’m just one simple human being — they’re a corporation.”

Like other residents, she expressed frustration with the race to ensure that trains were back running through the town as soon as the evacuation order had been lifted.

“Every time I hear a train, it makes me sick now,” she said. “It’s just mind-blowing to me how really ignorant they’ve been to us in every possible way that they could when they should be doing everything that they possibly can to help us.”

Mr. Shaw is also set to testify before a key Senate committee next week as lawmakers and state officials demand more information about what led to the derailment and the possible long-term effects on the region’s environment and public health.

“You’re going to determine the finish line — you’re going to determine when it’s made right,” Representative Bill Johnson, Republican of Ohio, said on Thursday, pledging a separate House hearing on the environmental response, along with a field hearing in the region.

President Biden, speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday after meeting with Senate Democrats, said that he “would be out there at some point” when asked if he would visit Ohio. He also confirmed that he would support legislation championed by the state’s two senators — Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, and J.D. Vance, a Republican — and other lawmakers that would toughen railway safety regulations.

Both residents and rail workers have focused their concerns on the possibility of harmful exposure to the train’s cargo and any other chemicals that seeped into the community’s environment. In the days after the derailment, residents complained about migraines, rashes and a persisting chemical odor, even as preliminary data from government officials did not show significant levels of vinyl chloride or other dangerous chemicals.

On Wednesday, Jonathon Long, the chairman of the union branch that represents Norfolk Southern employees, including those helping clean up the site of the derailment, wrote to Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio condemning the railroad company and its treatment of its workers. He said he had been told that some of the workers were not given appropriate protective gear to wear, despite the threat of possible exposure, and that others had continued to complain about migraines and nausea days after the derailment.

As of Thursday, about 2.1 million gallons of wastewater and 1,400 tons of solid waste have been hauled away from the site of the derailment, according to data provided by Mr. DeWine’s office. Out of tests done on 151 private well systems, 57 samples have been verified and do not show worrisome contaminant levels, matching similar results from the municipal water systems.

Today's Life Lesson

When it seems like Garland isn't moving fast enough to keep up with your average tree stump, I try to remember that not everybody in the DOJ is in tune with the US Constitution as it stands today. There are rats and termites eating away at the structure of every foundational institution holding our little experiment in democratic self-government in an upright position.

American democracy is the oldest one on the planet, because there's strength and resiliency built into it. But that doesn't make it inviolate or invincible - the Law Of Impermanence has not been repealed. 

The guys who first put this joint together knew the whole thing was dependent on people behaving in an honorable way. They warned us about it repeatedly, especially as contained in The Federalist Papers.

eg: The Federalist #71

There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted. The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.

There's more, but it's hard to dig it out of all that 18th century language.

So anyway, it's possible Garland has to contend with "the enemy within" as he tries to sort through all the Trump shit.

Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.

Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid at the property. But two senior FBI officials who would be in charge of leading the search resisted the plan as too combative and proposed instead to seek Trump’s permission to search his property, according to the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive investigation.

Prosecutors ultimately prevailed in that dispute, one of several previously unreported clashes in a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department over how aggressively to pursue a criminal investigation of a former president. The FBI conducted an unprecedented raid on Aug. 8, recovering more than 100 classified items, among them a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities.

Starting in May, FBI agents in the Washington field office had sought to slow the probe, urging caution given its extraordinary sensitivity, the people said.

Some of those field agents wanted to shutter the criminal investigation altogether in early June, after Trump’s legal team asserted a diligent search had been conducted and all classified records had been turned over, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions.

The idea of closing the probe was not something that was discussed or considered by FBI leadership and would not have been approved, a senior law enforcement official said.

This account reveals for the first time the degree of tension among law enforcement officials and behind-the-scenes deliberations as they wrestled with a national security case that has potentially far-reaching political consequences.

The disagreements stemmed in large part from worries among officials that whatever steps they took in investigating a former president would face intense scrutiny and second-guessing by people inside and outside the government. However, the agents, who typically perform the bulk of the investigative work in cases, and the prosecutors, who guide agents’ work and decide on criminal charges, ultimately focused on very different pitfalls, according to people familiar with their discussions.

On one side, federal prosecutors in the department’s national security division advocated aggressive ways to secure some of the country’s most closely guarded secrets, which they feared Trump was intentionally hiding at Mar-a-Lago; on the other, FBI agents in the Washington field office urged more caution with such a high-profile matter, recommending they take a cooperative rather than confrontational approach.

Both sides were mindful of the intense scrutiny the case was drawing and felt they had to be above reproach while investigating a former president then expected to run for reelection. While trying to follow the Justice Department playbook for classified records probes, investigators on both sides braced for Trump to follow his own playbook of publicly attacking the integrity of their investigation, according to people with knowledge of their discussions.

The FBI agents’ caution also was rooted in the fact that mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton and Trump had proved damaging to the FBI, and the cases subjected the bureau to sustained public attacks from partisans, the people said.

Prosecutors countered that the FBI failing to treat Trump as it had other government employees who were not truthful about classified records could threaten the nation’s security. As evidence surfaced suggesting that Trump or his team was holding back sensitive records, the prosecutors pushed for quick action to recover them, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

While the people who described these sensitive discussions disagreed on some particulars, they agreed on many aspects of the dispute.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment for this story. Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked about this report at a Senate hearing Wednesday, said he could not describe the investigation but added that in his experience as a prosecutor “there is often a robust discussion and it’s encouraged among investigators and prosecutors.”

It is not unusual for FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors to disagree during an investigation about how aggressively to pursue witnesses or other evidence. Often, those disagreements are temporary flare-ups that are debated, decided and resolved in due course.

While the FBI tends to have great discretion in the day-to-day conduct of investigations, it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to file criminal charges — and, like the prosecutors, the director of the FBI ultimately reports to the attorney general. The Mar-a-Lago case was unusual not just for its focus on a former president, but in the way it was closely monitored at every step by senior Justice Department officials. Garland said he “personally approved” the search of Trump’s property.

Attorney General Merrick Garland defended FBI and Justice Department employees on Aug. 11 following an FBI search at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. (Video: The Washington Post)
It’s unclear how the investigation may have been reshaped if the two sides had settled their disputes differently. Had the criminal investigation been closed in June, as some FBI field agents discussed, legal experts said it’s unlikely agents would have yet recovered the items found in the FBI’s raid of Trump’s residence.

Some inside the probe argued the infighting delayed the search by months, ultimately reducing the time prosecutors had to reach a decision on possible charges. Others contend the discussions were necessary to ensure the investigation proceeded on the surest footing, enabling officials to gather more evidence before they executed the search, people familiar with the dynamics said.

In November, before prosecutors had finished their work and decided whether to charge Trump or anyone else, he announced his campaign to retake the White House in 2024, leading Garland to appoint a special counsel, Jack Smith, to complete the investigation.

A collision course

From the moment the FBI and Justice Department received a formal referral on Feb. 7 from the National Archives and Records Administration to investigate missing classified records that could be in Trump’s possession, FBI investigators and federal prosecutors knew they were taking on a highly charged and sensitive case.

Archives officials reported that, after they had pleaded with Trump’s representatives for months, the former president had in January returned 15 boxes of government records he had stored at Mar-a-Lago since his presidency ended. Sifting through the boxes’ contents, archivists were shocked by what they found: 184 classified documents consisting of 700 pages. Archives officials said they had reason to believe Trump still had more sensitive or classified documents he took from the White House.

Prosecutors in the Justice Department’s national security division needed to answer two immediate questions: Was national security damaged by classified records being kept at Trump’s Florida club, and were any more sensitive records still in Trump’s possession?

Prosecutors and FBI agents were set on a collision course in April, when Trump through his lawyers tried to block the FBI from reviewing the classified records the Archives found. That set off alarm bells for prosecutors because it signaled he might be seeking to hide something, according to people familiar with the case. In preliminary interviews with witnesses in April and May, including Trump associates and staff, investigators were told of many more boxes of presidential records at Mar-a-Lago that could contain classified materials — similar in packaging to the boxes shipped there from the White House, and to those returned to the Archives in January, the people said.

Workers load boxes of newspapers and other items into a truck at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Jan. 14, 2021, in D.C. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The prosecutors and FBI agents began clashing in previously unreported incidents in early May, the people said. Jay Bratt, the prosecutor leading the department’s counterespionage work, advocated seeking a judge’s warrant for an unannounced search at the property to quickly recover any sensitive documents still there.

The FBI often conducts raids of properties without advance notice when investigators have reason to believe evidence is being withheld or could be destroyed. Some prosecutors saw guideposts in a related case a decade earlier, when Army Gen. David H. Petraeus lied to FBI agents about whether he had given classified information to a book author with whom he was having an affair. Agents executed a search warrant at Petraeus’s house and retrieved a cache of notebooks in which the prominent general improperly had stored extensive amounts of classified information.

But FBI agents viewed a Mar-a-Lago search in May as premature and combative, especially given that it involved raiding the home of a former president. That spring, top officials at FBI headquarters met with prosecutors to review the strength of evidence that could be used to justify a surprise search, according to two people familiar with their work.

Encountering resistance, Bratt agreed for the time being to subpoena Trump. On June 3, Bratt and a small number of FBI agents visited Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump’s lawyer and collect any classified records the Trump team had found to comply with the subpoena. That day, Trump’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, handed over an expandable envelope containing 38 classified records and produced a letter signed by another lawyer, Christina Bobb, asserting that a diligent search had been conducted and all classified records had been turned over.

Some FBI field agents then argued to prosecutors that they were inclined to believe Trump and his team had delivered everything the government sought to protect and said the bureau should close down its criminal investigation, according to some people familiar with the discussions.

But they said national security prosecutors pushed back and instead urged FBI agents to gather more evidence by conducting follow-up interviews with witnesses and obtaining Mar-a-Lago surveillance video from the Trump Organization.

The government sought surveillance video footage by subpoena in late June. It showed someone moving boxes from the area where records had been stored, not long after Trump was put on notice to return all such records, according to people familiar with the probe. That evidence suggested it was likely more classified records remained at Mar-a-Lago, the people said, despite the claim of Trump’s lawyers. It also painted for both sides a far more worrisome picture — one that would soon build the legal justification for the August raid.

By mid-July, the prosecutors were eager for the FBI to scour the premises of Mar-a-Lago. They argued that the probable cause for a search warrant was more than solid, and the likelihood of finding classified records and evidence of obstruction was high, according to the four people.

But the prosecutors learned FBI agents were still loath to conduct a surprise search. They also heard from top FBI officials that some agents were simply afraid: They worried taking aggressive steps investigating Trump could blemish or even end their careers, according to some people with knowledge of the discussions. One official dubbed it “the hangover of Crossfire Hurricane,” a reference to the FBI investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible connections to the Trump campaign, the people said. As president, Trump repeatedly targeted some FBI officials involved in the Russia case.

A rift within the FBI

Against that backdrop, Bratt and other senior national security prosecutors, including Assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen and George Toscas, a top counterintelligence official, met about a week before the Aug. 8 raid with FBI agents on their turf, inside an FBI conference room.

The prosecutors brought with them a draft search warrant and argued that the FBI had no other choice but to search Mar-a-Lago as soon as practically possible, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. Prosecutors said the search was the only safe way to recover an untold number of sensitive government records that witnesses had said were still on the property.

Steven M. D’Antuono, then the head of the FBI Washington field office, which was running the investigation, was adamant the FBI should not do a surprise search, according to the people.

D’Antuono said he would agree to lead such a raid only if he were ordered to, according to two of the people. The two other people said D’Antuono did not refuse to do the search but argued that it should be a consensual search agreed to by Trump’s legal team. He repeatedly urged that the FBI instead seek to persuade Corcoran to agree to a consensual search of the property, said all four of the people.

Tempers ran high in the meeting. Bratt raised his voice at times and stressed to the FBI agents that the time for trusting Trump and his lawyer was over, some of the people said. He reminded them of the new footage suggesting Trump or his aides could be concealing classified records at the Florida club.

D’Antuono and some fellow FBI officials complained how bad it would look for agents with “FBI” emblazoned on their jackets to invade a former president’s home, according to some people with knowledge of the meeting. The FBI’s top counterintelligence official, Alan E. Kohler Jr., then asked the senior FBI agents to consider how bad it would look if the FBI chose not to act and government secrets were hidden at Mar-a-Lago, the people said.

D’Antuono also questioned why the search would target presidential records as well as classified records, particularly because the May subpoena had only sought the latter.

“We are not the presidential records police,” D’Antuono said, according to people familiar with the exchange.

Later, D’Antuono asked if Trump was officially the subject of the criminal investigation.

“What does that matter?” Bratt replied, according to the people. Bratt said the most important fact was that highly sensitive government records probably remained at Mar-a-Lago and could be destroyed or spirited away if the FBI did not recover them soon.

FBI agents on the case worried the prosecutors were being overly aggressive. They found it worrisome, too, that Bratt did not seem to think it mattered whether Trump was the official subject of the probe. They feared any of these features might not stand up to scrutiny if an inspector general or congressional committee chose to retrace the investigators’ steps, according to the people.

Jason Jones, the FBI’s general counsel who is considered a confidant of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, agreed the team had sufficient probable cause to justify a search warrant. D’Antuono agreed, too, but said they should still try to persuade Corcoran to let them search without a warrant, the people said.

The disagreement over seeking Corcoran’s consent centered partly on how each side viewed Trump’s lawyer. The prosecutors — as well as some officials at FBI headquarters — were highly suspicious of him and feared that appealing to Corcoran risked that word would spread through Trump’s circle, giving the former president or his associates time to hide or destroy evidence, according to people familiar with the internal debate.

Some FBI agents, on the other hand, had more trust in Corcoran — a former federal prosecutor who had recently returned to practicing law and represented Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser, against criminal contempt charges. The agents drafted a possible script they could use to pitch to Trump’s lawyer on a consensual search. D’Antuono’s team said they could keep surveillance on Mar-a-Lago and act quickly if they saw any scramble to move evidence. The prosecutors refused, saying it was too risky, the people said.

In the meeting, some attendees viewed Toscas, a Justice Department veteran who had worked with the FBI through the Crossfire Hurricane and Clinton email investigations, as a prosecutor whose words would carry special weight with the FBI agents. He told D’Antuono he had shared the agents’ skepticism, but was now “swayed” that the evidence was too strong not to get a search warrant, according to people familiar with the discussion.

“George, that’s great, but you haven’t swayed me,” D’Antuono replied.

Jones, the FBI’s general counsel, said he planned to recommend to Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate that the FBI seek a warrant for the search, the people said. D’Antuono replied that he would recommend that they not.

The raid

But prosecutors appeared unwilling to wait and debate further, according to people familiar with the discussions. Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security, appealed to senior officials in FBI headquarters to push their agents to conduct the raid. Abbate handed down his instructions a day later: The Washington field office led by D’Antuono would execute the surprise search.

On Aug. 5, FBI agents quietly sought and received approval from a federal magistrate judge in Florida to search Mar-a-Lago for documents. The search was planned for the following Monday, Aug. 8.

Prosecutors remained somewhat on guard until the day of the raid, as they continued to hear rumblings of dissent from the Washington field office, according to three people familiar with the case. Some of the people said prosecutors heard some FBI agents wanted to call Corcoran once they arrived at Mar-a-Lago and wait for him to fly down to join them in the search; prosecutors said that would not work.

Just days before the scheduled search, prosecutors got a request from FBI headquarters to put off the search for another day, according to people familiar with the matter. The FBI told prosecutors the bureau planned to announce big news that week — charges against an Iranian for plotting to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton — and did not want the impact of that case to be overshadowed or complicated by media coverage of the Mar-a-Lago raid. It is common for the Justice Department and FBI to fine-tune the timing of certain actions or announcements to avoid one law enforcement priority competing with another. But prosecutors, fatigued by months of fighting with agents in the FBI’s field office, wanted no delay, no matter the reason, the people said. The search would proceed as scheduled.

FBI agents found ways to make the search less confrontational than it otherwise could have been, according to people familiar with the investigation: The search would take place when Trump was in New York and not in Palm Beach; the Secret Service would receive a heads-up a few hours before FBI agents arrived to avoid any law enforcement conflict; and agents would wear white polo shirts and khakis to cut a lower profile than if they wore their traditional blue jackets with FBI insignia.

On Aug. 8, FBI agents scoured Trump’s residence, office and storage areas, and left with more than 100 classified records, 18 of them top-secret. Prosecutors claimed vindication in the trove of bright color-coded folders that agents recovered.

Some documents were classified at such a restricted level that seasoned national security investigators lacked the proper authorization to look at them, leading to consternation on the prosecution team. They involved highly restricted “special access programs” that require Cabinet-level sign-off even for officials with top-secret clearances to review. The documents described Iran’s missile program and records related to highly sensitive intelligence aimed at China, The Washington Post previously has reported.

In late fall, Bratt and his team began sketching out the evidence that potentially pointed to Trump’s obstruction, with an expectation that the prosecutors together would soon make a recommendation on whether to charge the former president, according to people familiar with the case. Bratt’s team began to button up witness accounts and stress-test factual evidence against the law.

Meanwhile, in late October, amid news reports that Trump was looking to soon announce another bid for the presidency, Garland told aides he was seriously contemplating appointing a special counsel to take over the investigation, as well as a separate criminal probe looking at Trump and his allies’ effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election — a rare procedure designed to ensure public faith in fair investigations.

On Nov. 15, Trump took the stage in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom — at the same property where FBI agents had searched three months earlier — and announced that he would run for president again in 2024. The Justice Department’s national security division leaders who had pushed the FBI to be more aggressive pursuing Trump did not finish the investigation or reach a charging decision before a new chief took over.

On Nov. 18, Garland sent word to the prosecutors working on both of the probes to come to Justice Department headquarters for a meeting that morning. He wanted to privately inform them that he planned later that day to appoint a special counsel. Garland told them they could choose their next steps, but he hoped they would join the special counsel’s team for the good of the two investigations, people familiar with the conversation said.

Just after 2 p.m., Garland stood before cameras to announce he had appointed Smith to take over the investigations. Flanked by three of his top deputies, Garland said the Justice Department had the integrity to continue the investigations fairly but that turning them over to an outside prosecutor was “the right thing to do.”

“The extraordinary circumstances presented here demand it,” he added.

Predators

In 1977, the guy borrowed $5,250 to get him some college learnin'. For that money, he could've bought a brand new Oldsmobile Cutlas Supreme Brougham with all the trimmings ...

Instead, he bought himself a nightmare - a problem that's followed him his whole adult life.

And it's still causing him trouble.

He took out a student loan in ’77. Today, he’s barely cracked the principal.
The struggles of some borrowers to clear their debts expose flaws in the system

When C.W. Hamilton took out his first student loan in 1977, the Education Department wasn’t even a federal agency. The $5,250 he borrowed to complete an associate’s degree at Cochise College in Arizona was supposed to be an investment in his future, not a lifelong burden. Yet after more than 40 years of payments and bouts of default, Hamilton still owes almost as much as he first borrowed.

“It’s like an anchor around my neck,” said Hamilton, a 72-year-old Army veteran in Reno, Nev. “I live on peanuts. ... I can never get from underneath this debt.”

There are nearly 47,000 people like Hamilton who have been in repayment on their federal student loans for at least 40 years, according to data obtained from the Education Department through a Freedom of Information Act request. About 82 percent of them are in default on their loans, meaning they haven’t made a voluntary payment in at least 270 days.

“This is sort of a monumental failure,” said Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project. “There are so many relief programs in the student loan system to address some sort of financial distress. But it’s this real patchwork, and borrowers struggle to navigate it. The department itself and its servicers often can’t navigate it either.”

While these borrowers represent a sliver of the 43.5 million people with federal student debt, their existence is an indictment of policies meant to help people manage their loans. Years of administrative failures and poorly designed programs have denied many borrowers an off-ramp from a perpetual cycle of debt. Even as the Biden administration tries to remedy these problems — including fighting legal challenges to its plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for many — the fixes could still leave vulnerable borrowers like Hamilton on the sidelines.

The road to repayment

To understand how tens of thousands of people could be in debt for decades, consider the options for repaying federal student loans. When borrowers leave school, they are automatically assigned to a standard 10-year repayment plan. Others extend the period by enrolling in graduated plans that increase payments over time or income-driven repayment plans that tie their monthly bill to earnings and family size.

People can also temporarily pause their payments through deferment or forbearance, which can lengthen the timeline. From the time student loan borrowers’ first loans enter repayment, the median length of time it takes to pay in full is 15½ years, according to the Education Department. How much you borrow, how much you earn and whether you get your degree can all play a role in how quickly you pay off the debt.

Those last two factors played a starring role in Hamilton’s struggle to repay his student loans. After a dispute with an instructor, he left Cochise before completing his aviation studies. That led to a series of low-wage jobs and relocations for work. School loans were low on the list of priorities for the father of five. Hamilton doesn’t recall receiving any notice to make payments for the first decade after leaving school, which he suspects is because he moved around so much.

“The job market was really tight at the time, so I was taking different jobs for a while and didn’t have a locked-down address,” Hamilton recalls. “We didn’t have cellphones at that time, so they couldn’t call and say, ‘Hey, you’re behind on your loans.’”

But the debt caught up with him soon after he began receiving Social Security disability benefits. Injuries from stints fighting wildfires and fixing airplanes left Hamilton unable to work, and his federal benefits became fair game for collection. Through the Treasury Offset Program, the federal government has been garnishing his disability benefits on and off since 2002.

Before the Education Department paused payments and collection in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, he’d involuntarily paid more than $13,000. Treasury last deducted $175.05 from his $1,165 monthly Social Security check to service fees and interest on his loans — leaving Hamilton still owing $4,963.

“It’s tough because they’re taking all of this money, for all of these years, and nothing is going to the principal,” Hamilton said. “I’m getting nowhere. I was climbing up, but my debt kept going up.”

He had tried to shake free from the offset. Given his disability, Hamilton applied for a discharge of his loans through a program for totally and permanently disabled borrowers but was denied. He opted for student loan rehabilitation, a one-time process that brings a borrower back into good standing after nine consecutive payments. But Hamilton fell back into default. He said he was then advised to consolidate, another way to exit default by taking out a new loan to repay the past-due debt, but felt uneasy about another loan.

A fresh start

An analysis of federal data from July 2003 to April 2016 found 70 percent of borrowers in default were able to bring their student loans back into good standing within 10 years, but the rest remained in default. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that up to a third of borrowers who exit through loan rehabilitation default again within two years. It’s a problem that reflects the limitations of the system, said Brian Denten, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ project on student borrower success.

“You only get one shot at each of these options,” Denten said. “After that, if you default again, you can either pay off your entire loan in full or essentially sit there and have your wages, Social Security or tax refund garnished until your obligation is resolved.”

The Biden administration is temporarily waiving the rules governing default, offering 7.5 million people like Hamilton a “fresh start” by placing their loans in good standing when the payment pause ends even if they’ve defaulted multiple times in the past.

The initiative will eliminate borrowers’ record of default before the repayment pause and reinstate their eligibility for federal Pell grants, work-study and additional student loans to help those who may have dropped out before completing their degrees. It will also spare people from the seizure of wages, tax refunds and Social Security benefits.

Rich Williams, senior adviser in the Office of the Undersecretary at the department, said the Biden administration is working to understand the administrative, regulatory and statutory changes needed to realign the existing delinquency and default consequences.

“The principles that we are following as we’re exploring policies like the new income-based repayment plan ... [are] that borrowers shouldn’t be in repayment for more than 25 years,” Williams said. “We’re going through that exploration phase, and Fresh Start is the first step.”

The one-time initiative isn’t exactly seamless. Rather than being automatically enrolled, people in default must contact the department’s Default Resolution Group or their loan holders to take full advantage of the program. They will have one year from the end of the student loan payment pause — set to expire later this year — to make payment arrangements. Failure to act will throw borrowers back into default.

“A big part of it will be getting the word out,” Denten said. “We know from speaking with servicers and borrowers that it can be hard to establish a regular line of communication.”

Even if people take advantage of the program, they could end up defaulting again. Denten said connecting distressed borrowers to an income-driven repayment plan will be critical. Depending on their income, people enrolled in such plans can pay as little as $0 a month and it would count as credit toward loan cancellation. It is a lifeline, however, that doesn’t always reach the people most in need.

Promise and failure

With the advent of income-driven repayment nearly 30 years ago, borrowers could avoid being saddled with education loans in old age: If you keep up with payments, the federal government will forgive your remaining balance after 20 years for undergrad loans or after 25 years for graduate school debt. The plans also let people struggling with their debt avoid delinquency and default, as the less you earn, the less you pay each month.

But in the early days, the Education Department and its student loan servicers did little to publicize the plans.

Rosalie Lynch, 72, said she learned about them only in 2015 after doing her own research. By then, she had twice defaulted on the $25,000 in student loans she amassed in the early 1980s for a bachelor’s degree in social work from Bethel College and master’s degree in counseling from Kansas State University. Lynch had tried to stay ahead of her payments but stumbled in the wake of a “toxic” marriage, she said.

“He wouldn’t help me and expected me to take on all of the financial responsibilities,” said Lynch, who works as a mental health counselor in Idaho. “There were times I just couldn’t afford [my student loans]. They had to be a low priority. The kids needed food, they needed clothes. I don’t make that much money.”

On the advice of her loan servicer, Lynch said she often postponed her payments through forbearance. It paused the bill, but not the interest. Between the periods of forbearance and default, Lynch accumulated enough interest and fees to more than double her debt to $65,000. Because of her wages, Lynch qualified to make a $0 monthly payment under the IDR plan. Still, she worries she will die in debt. Federal student loans are discharged upon death.

Like Lynch, Patricia C. Vener-Saavedra, 70, spent years in forbearance before enrolling in an income-driven repayment plan a decade ago. Working as an adjunct instructor for years left her stretching to cover basic living expenses, which didn’t include student loans. Vener-Saavedra said she learned about income-driven repayment after her loans were transferred to a new servicer.

“I kept asking my different servicers if there was anything I can do besides forbearance. And all I heard was ‘No, no,’” Vener-Saavedra said. “Finally, it changed to someone who said, ‘Oh, yeah, you can get an income-based plan.’ And I’m like, ‘How long has this existed?’”

With a $0 monthly payment, the IDR plan provided a path to clearing the debt Vener-Saavedra acquired for a master’s degree in astrophysics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York. But the $35,000 in student loans she graduated with in 1991 has since ballooned to $88,141.

“I’ll be 85 when the loans are forgiven,” Vener-Saavedra said. “If I knew about these income plans earlier, I might not be in this position.”

Shafroth at the National Consumer Law Center said that with the existence of income-driven plans, no one in the federal student loan system should be in repayment for more than 25 years. The Education Department has previously disclosed that 4.4 million borrowers have been repaying their debt for at least 20 years, with half of them in default.

Yet a 2022 Government Accountability Office report found that the department had erased the balances of only 132 people as of June 2021 under the IDR plans. It said the agency failed to ensure that payments were accurately tracked until a decade after the first income-driven plan was implemented. As a result, some people with older loans are at high risk of spending more time in repayment than necessary.

Researchers at the GAO said the department never provided borrowers regular updates on their progress toward debt cancellation or readily available information about forgiveness requirements. Without that guidance, researchers said, people who believed they were making progress may not have known that postponing payments doesn’t count.

The blistering report arrived a day after the Biden administration announced in April that it would temporarily allow any month in which borrowers made payments to retroactively count toward forgiveness, even if they were not enrolled in an income-driven plan. The one-time revision meant at least 40,000 people would now receive automatic loan cancellation.

“There are student debts that should have been canceled, but no one bothered to do that,” Williams of the Education Department said. “So we’re automatically correcting those errors and discharging those loans.”

Under the initiative, the department will also grant a one-time account adjustment to count the months borrowers postponed their payments through forbearance if they remained in that status for years. Still, other features of the IDR adjustment will shut out many distressed borrowers.

Months in which borrowers are delinquent or in default do not count toward the forgiveness threshold. What’s more, the department is only counting payments as far back as 1994. Both of those stipulations will probably leave Hamilton and Lynch out in the cold.

“There doesn’t seem to be a good reason for this,” Shaforth said of the exclusions.

In January, the advocacy group Student Borrower Protection Center sent a letter urging the Education Department to reconsider excluding time in default from the account adjustment, saying “failure to fully remedy these harms would be an unforced error.”

The Education Department declined to comment on the matter.

Advocates have long questioned the rationale behind the federal government’s relentless pursuit of student loan payments from distressed borrowers.

Unlike the Education Department, banks and lenders in the private market routinely write off the debt they can’t collect, and there is a statute of limitations on collection, Shaforth said. While the federal student loan program is not as flexible, she said, the department does have the power to settle, compromise and terminate the collection of debts. She said the agency could use other regulations that give the government an out when it can’t collect a debt within a reasonable time.

“I would think that 40 years should be a reasonable time,” Shaforth said.

See also:

The Biden-Harris Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan Explained