Pod Save America - PSA Presents: The Pundies.

Jon, Jon, Tommy and Dan answer your questions and give us their resolutions for 2022. Then they go through the worst takes of 2021 (including their own) for Pod Save America's second-annual Pundies.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.

Duration: 36m
Broadcast on: 28 Dec 2021
Audio Format: other

We only have 100 days left until the 2022 midterms, and we need to make every one count. We know how high the stakes are in these midterms. Abortion is on the ballot. Climate is on the ballot. Our basic freedoms and ability to make our voices heard to protect them are on the ballot. Head to votesaveamerica.com/midterms to take our Count Me in pledge to volunteer the weekend of July 31st and become part of our midterm madness program to get involved in the most important elections in 2022 from the Senate to your local school board. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Fabra. I'm John Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and welcome to the pod. We got all four of us here and today's show we're going to answer 2021's last round of mailbag questions, revisit 2020's New Year resolutions and set some new ones for 2022 and present the second annual punty awards for the absolute worst takes of 2021. Busy show, lots to do. A lot going on here. Very exciting. We'll get to it. When does this come out? December. Couple days before New Year's. A couple days before New Year's. Great. That's Andy and he's nodding your hand. Leave it all in. I want everyone to know this. Thank you, Andy, for being helpful. All right. Let's start with some of your questions. We want to do mostly fun questions, but because so many of you have asked about student loans and student debt, we will start there.

Background in March of 2020, the CARES Act paused all student loan repayments because of the pandemic. Payments were supposed to start again on September 30th, 2021, but Joe Biden extended the pause until January 31st, 2022. But last week, the White House said he's not extending it again, which means people will have to start repaying their loans in February separately. Biden still hasn't kept his campaign promise to cancel up to $10,000 in student debt for every borrower. Guys, what gives? What's going on? I have a theory. You have a theory. Tom, he has a theory. I mean, I think judging by Joe Biden's public statements, he thinks he's not a big fan of this proposal, even though he made it. I think he thinks it's overly weighted towards wealthier people who pay for college. I'm not saying that's accurate or the right way to look at it, but I think that's what he thinks. I've also just assumed that he wanted to get billed back better done first, so that Joe Manchin wouldn't see the price tag on student loan debt relief and start crying about it and throw a tantrum and bangs rattle on the ground of the senate and then refuse to pass the bill. That's my gut. I think that's all right on the canceling debt. I want to separate the two. I want to start with the pause on the payments, because you could imagine the White House saying, "You know what? The whole idea of pausing the repayments on the debt was about getting people through the pandemic. The pandemic is very much still with us, so instead of ending it at the end of January, we will continue to another three or four or five months. What do you think, Dan?" I think I am very confused by the politics of this, but there is this tension in their messaging, which is the economy, despite the short-term challenges of inflation, is doing great historic job creation. We see if the economy also we need these emergency measures at the same time, and I think that that is a place that they have found I think is a navigable piece of tension, but it is tension within their message. I think that there's an obvious compromise, which is you continue to suspend payments for everyone except for people who have debt from an MBA, because I don't care about them. I think that's a great proposal, honestly. What should happen? I think that they should obviously extend the pause for another couple months, and I don't. If someone has a good reason... Is there a court ruling that maybe you made that hard? You think of the homeowners? Ah, fuck. Yeah, so this is what I'd love to know. Smart people out there, because I've tried to look this up before the episode. Not at this table. If there is a legal reason for not being able to extend or why the Biden administration thinks they shouldn't extend the pause, then let me know. But if there's no legal reason, then I don't think there is a good substantive reason or political reason, certainly, for not extending it. And then when you get to the canceling up to $10,000 in student debt for every borrower, I do think Tommy, that's probably like, you know, let's give him until the bill back better basis on that one.

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