New Orleans   Millions owe billions in student loans and in some cases it’s a just-past-the-cradle to the grave debt that just lingers on.

In a good move and through a bipartisan vote under the George W. Bush Administration in 2007, Congress approved a bill that under certain conditions would allow an individual forgiveness of student loan debt. The conditions were that they had to make payments for ten years and they had to work for a nonprofit organization or a unit of the government. Now we are coming up on ten years and more than a half-million former students and, arguably, committed public service individuals are hearing that the Department of Education may renege and claim, hey, gotcha, and still hold them to the debt and essentially have tricked them as hostages to their program for a decade. How can that be possible? How can they get away with that?

It’s a complicated process, which probably doesn’t surprise anyone to hear. Worse, it appears that nothing about the process is transparent, including the reasons why the Department of Education approves some groups as qualifying and rejects other groups arbitrarily, though they are also nonprofits and their work seems almost identical.

Equally disturbing is that this could be a deeper setback than just the question of a student’s debt. There has long been a policy discussion about the value of national service. Since the days of the dreaded draft and the Russian roulette of the draft lottery during the Vietnam War, compulsory military service has been replaced by the all-volunteer Army. In our age of inequity that means the military in peacetime has become a lower rung on the working class job and training ladder, and during wartime which seems semi-permanent since 9/11 has become a high risk option for anyone other than the patriotic or the desperate.

Nonetheless, presidents from Clinton to Obama have argued that there was real merit to increased national service, which was part and parcel to this provision of debt forgiveness for younger Americans that were willing to pass up bigger money and softer cushions to work for the government and in public service, including as firefighters, police, teachers and other critical positions in both cities and rural communities. Nonprofits fit into this same dynamic, which is why they are nonprofit and why many are tax exempt because of their value to the community in service, healthcare, and other endeavors.

The President and the Secretary of Education need to do right on this and honor the country’s word to individuals who relied on the country’s promise that in exchange for ten years of payments and ten years of service, they would have the rest of their loans forgiven. This was a good, fair deal. It should not be changed, and if it is changed, it should be on this Congress, this President, and this Secretary of Education going forward, not clawing back.

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Please enjoy the Grateful Dead’s Dancing in the Dark.

Thanks to KABF.