On January 28th, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an order to freeze all federal loans and grants. These loans and grants help our society function and the people of the United States of America make better lives for themselves.
Government loans are typically given to individuals, however, they are meant to be paid back over a certain period of time. This period of time can differ depending on the loan the individual acquires.
Government loans help support many individual people who may need extra money for crucial parts of life. To put this into perspective, the US student loan balance is $1.773 trillion. Most loans go into the category of disaster relief, student loans, small business loans, housing loans, or loans to support our farmers and ranchers. These loans allow for more people to buy houses, help the housing industry grow, allow more small business to be made, which helps the local economy, and allow for farmers to better expand and protect their as well give them a safety net in case of a bad season. Of course, disaster relief helps protect families when they are in their darkest times, giving the potential to bounce back.
It is important to note that loans are different from grants because these loans go to individual people and need to be paid back. Government grants provide funding towards embassies, research for curing diseases and other scientific advancements, aid to help the homeless and impoverished, building of infrastructure, and the creation of schools and universities. Government grants allow for a better society by providing aid towards services that enable people to be more educated, less impoverished, and have a less risk of death from deadly diseases. Our infrastructure is dependent on these government grants.
President Trump wants to stop the federal government from being able to issue grants or loans of any kind. He originally said he would still give out medicaid and social security, however, Medicaid would be frozen anyway under the initial memo. This means that if this executive action goes through, millions of people would lose out on much needed support systems. This will cause damage to the economy as small businesses would have difficulties being made. People would have huge difficulties going to college as they would be unable to get loans or additional funds. Farms would lose the support they need to grow, hurting food production and increasing prices of food, and people who are hurt in disasters, like fires that just happened, would lose out on the help they need. At this moment, supreme court justices have temporarily stopped the freezing of these various grants and loans, but the threat of losing such key funds now constantly looms overhead.
Government loans and grants work together to create our country’s infrastructure and actually allow people to afford to use them. The loss of these grants could cause harm you might not even consider now. It is important to note that we are unable to capture the full breadth of all the grants. But if you want to check it out yourself, clicking this website shows hundreds of grants that have been given out in the past, and shows the importance of them. Hopefully, the bill goes through and the majority of the populus can still go to college.
