Student-loan-interest deduction restored in 1997 after a white witness testified

Evidence

A year later, Congress shifted its position again, and student loan interest became an allowable deduction. A white dental student named Jennifer Long testified before the Senate Committee on Finance, advocating for the change. She told committee members that she would owe 90,000 upon graduation, which she would pay in installments of 1,100 per month. She estimated that she would pay $7,500 in interest in her first year of repayment. (She also called out the hypocrisy of the Republicans’ line of attack on student borrowers, given that the mortgage interest deduction had survived the 1986 reforms despite primarily benefiting the wealthy.) — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 323

Categorization

• XREF: The Jennifer Long testimony — a specific white face advancing an education subsidy — fits reader’s interest in who gets to shape these tax policies; also shows the 1986-1997 flip-flop making policy unstable.
• SEED: The inversion — student loan interest deductible (for those who could borrow) versus mortgage interest preserved — is about whose debt society subsidizes; a good device for showing which asset class (home vs. human capital) the code favors.