President Obama is working on a plan to completely forgive most of the nation’s student loan borrowers for debt they accrued while pursuing a college or university degree, according to the White House blog.
The official forgiveness is part of an effort to make the nation’s current and former students not feel so bad about having taken out enormous loans for studies they believed would ensure a job. Total student-loan debt has surpassed one trillion dollars, a figure Obama says must make borrowers feel downright rotten.
“I want you to know that from the depths of my heart, I forgive you,” Obama said. “You had every reason to believe your engineering degree would lead to a solid career, so there was no reason why you shouldn’t have borrowed money to pay for tuition, and the same goes for folks who studied computer science, finance or nursing.”
“However, there’s no way in hell I’m going to forgive those of you who borrowed giant sums of money to study art history,” he said. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”
“And just so you know, I’ll never forgive anyone who took out a hundred thousand dollars in loans to get a degree in creative writing,” he added. “You people should be locked up in an insane asylum.”
To make the forgiveness official, the Department of Education will be sending out cards to the 37 million Americans who are burdened with student-loan debt. Each card will be signed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and will carry a message such as, “We forgive you for your stupid decision — isn’t it time you forgave yourself?”