No Such Thing As Student Loan "Forgiveness"
Let’s stop with the euphemisms, shall we?
The Biden administration isn’t planning to “forgive" student loans. What Biden wants to do is transfer that debt to taxpayers. It’s a naked attempt to pander to younger voters by wiping out their college loans. Whether they need help or not. Freebies!
But the plan is patently unfair, transfers debt from doctors, lawyers and professionals to the working class, will cost $400 billion and the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case yesterday, is poised to scrap it.
If Congress wants to “forgive” student debt, it should vote on the issue and then go back and try to sell the plan to their blue-collar voters who never went to college, to their college-educated voters who repaid their loans and to the millions of voters who are struggling to pay their mortgages, car loans and credit card debt.
Good luck with that.
The most cogent argument against wiping out the debt was made by John Roberts. From USA Today:
Chief Justice John Roberts raised what he called “the fairness argument,” echoing a common criticism from opponents of President Biden’s student loan program who argue it punishes Americans who couldn’t afford college or worked hard to pay off their loans.
Roberts introduced a hypothetical situation of two high school graduates, neither of whom could afford college. One took out a loan to attend. The other started a lawn care business with help from a bank loan instead of going to college.
“At the end of four years, we know statistically, that the person with the college degree is going to do significantly financially better over the course of life than the person without,” Roberts said. “And then along comes the government and tells that person, you don't have to pay your loan.”
Roberts said the person who started a lawn care service still had to pay off their business loans “even though his tax dollars are going to support the forgiveness of the loan for the college graduate who is going to make a lot more than him over the course of his lifetime.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that when you borrow money, you should repay it. And I’ve written about this issue before.
Lots of Americans are drowning in household debt, thanks to inflation caused by the Biden administration’s profligate spending. The government is not throwing these borrowers a life preserver, however.
Yet nothing in the Biden plan addresses the escalating price of higher education or discourages future borrowing. Without that, student loan “forgiveness” will have to be an annual event, much like the presidential pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey.
And I hesitate to point this out, but there ARE ways to get a college education without incurring crushing debt: ROTC, for instance. Or Teach for America. Or go the community college route.
Students could always study hard in high school and earn scholarship money.
Or skip college and go the vocational route. Fact is, America needs more plumbers and fewer women’s studies majors.
