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MisalignedEducation & Student Debt

There is no reason the federal government should profit from student loans.

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MisalignedFact-checker reviewConfidence: 70%

Independently verified. All three cited sources are real, live, and support the finding; the outcome is fair under a party-neutral standard. Origin: Trump made this argument in 2015 (Crippled America / #AskTrump campaign), noting federal student loans are 'one of the only places where our country actually makes money' but offering no policy fix (Money, Sept 2015 - confirmed). Record in office runs against the promise's direction (reduce government profit / borrower cost): (1) His FY2018-FY2021 budgets repeatedly proposed eliminating Direct Subsidized Loans - shifting ~$2.8B/yr in interest costs from the government onto ~6 million students - and abolishing PSLF (CAP - confirmed). (2) The signed 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated the cheapest income-driven plans (SAVE/PAYE/ICR) and the U.S. Dept. of Education's own June 2026 fact sheet confirms consolidating 40+ options into RAP and a Tiered Standard plan (ed.gov PRIMARY - confirmed live). Brookings/CBO analysis of that law is the decisive evidence: CBO scores RAP as SAVING the government ~$271 billion over 10 years 'largely through higher repayments,' i.e. the enacted law makes the government collect MORE from borrowers - the opposite of the promise. The one profit-reducing action (the temporary March 2020 COVID 0% interest waiver) was emergency pandemic relief, not a structural policy aimed at ending profit, and it justifies MISALIGNED rather than HOSTILE. A Democrat with an enacted law increasing government student-loan revenue by $271B plus annual budgets to strip subsidized loans would earn the same label; confidence held at 0.7 to reflect the genuine COVID-waiver counterweight and that some measures were proposals rather than enacted.

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