COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down President Joe Biden’s federal loan forgiveness program puts pressure back on students to pay off their debts.
“It’s been really difficult for me,” Ohio State University graduate student Gary Leslie said.
Leslie went to OSU for his undergraduate degree and working to pay off approximately $20,000 in student loans.
“[$20,000] was the exact amount that was going to be forgiven by this bill passing and it’s really disappointing that it didn’t pass,” Leslie said. “Yeah it doesn’t feel too great.”
But Leslie said he’s not surprised by the decision.
“As soon as it kind of happened, I thought it was a pretty polarizing bill for a lot of people,” Leslie said. “I just feel like I’m a pawn in the big game to be honest with you with how they want certain parties to be represented . . . I just it doesn’t feel good.”
NBC4 reached out to various Republican leaders in Ohio for reaction to this decision.
Republican Senator J.D. Vance did not have anything new to say, but addressed the issue in the past. In a tweet from April 2022, he wrote, in part: “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America. No bailouts for a corrupt system.”
Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown vehemently disagrees with Vance and the Supreme Court’s decision.
“This out-of-touch Supreme Court is taking away opportunities from a generation of Ohioans,” Sen. Brown said in a statement. “I will not stop fighting to make education and training affordable and accessible for all Ohioans, no matter what path they take.”
No matter what side you fall on, financial experts say that now is the time to prepare to pay back those student loans.
Maddi Keegan is a financial advisor and director of operations for Frazier Financial Advisors. She says borrowers should start going over their budgets and making room to pay for those loans.
“I know it can be kind of hard to have to evaluate and tighten budgets a little bit. But I mean, there’s really two ways to manage whenever you have a payment, which is, you know, either make more or spend less and so I think just having awareness and being able to sit down and look at it and understand it,” Keegan said.
It may have been a few years, so she says people should check in on interest rates, understand what payments are going to be and build that into budgets. Also, check in on servicers and stay up to date on information needed to stay on top of those loans.