When someone applies for a loan, and signs a contract agreeing to the terms of that loan, why don’t we expect them to meet the terms that they agreed to?
According to CNN, Friday the Biden administration announced that it is using existing student loan forgiveness programs to cancel another round of student debt, totaling $7.4 billion for 277,000 borrowers.
In total, the Biden administration has authorized the cancellation of $153 billion in student loan debt for 4.3 million people. That is as much as 9% of the current federal student loan debt, and an average benefit of more than $35,000.
How does he do that? Why does he do that?
Biden proposed a huge forgiveness program in 2022, but it was killed by the Supreme Court. That program would have wiped out up to $20,000 for borrowers earning less than $125,000 a year. It would have cost $400 billion.
Although the Supreme Court ruled that program was beyond the administration’s authority, Biden has still figured ways to cancel more student loan debt than any other president.
When I wrote about this subject two years ago, our nation’s debt was $30 trillion; now it is approaching $35 trillion. It took this country more than 200 years to run up $6 trillion in national debt. In the last twenty years, we have added that much again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Ouch!!
If the government is willing to wink at this obligation, what’s next? Why should my neighbor be required to pay for my obligation? We are running this country like a condo association, and my HOA fees are going up. Perhaps we should start paying down our nation’s debt before the government starts paying off yours and mine.
If we quit forgiving committed obligations, it may even be easier to convince the country to provide military and humanitarian aid for those that really need it, and for causes that may benefit the U.S. down the road.
I paid for my own college – all four years. Yes, it was cheaper then, but that’s all relative; it seemed like a lot at the time, and my parents did not have the resources to pay for it. My kids graduated college without student debt because our family managed the resources we had.
Everyone has seen an interview with the woe-is-me recent private-college grad, who graduated with $160,000 in student debt for her undergrad liberal arts degree. She plays the victim with her $45,000 salary and we become sympathetic to her plight, but shouldn’t she have considered her responsibility BEFORE she took on such costly obligations?
When her debt gets forgiven, kids who went to community college for two years, because they couldn’t afford Yale, may ask, what about me? And what is the plan for those kids that have already paid off their student loans? Do they get a refund when you forgive those who have not?
Almost every student loan is a federal government obligation. There is no free lunch, so if these obligations are not repaid, taxpayers are on the hook.
Every $7.4 billion that Biden “benevolently” hands out in “forgiveness” to college graduates comes out of your pocket and mine, or just adds more to our crushing national debt. And who pays for it? Working Americans who didn’t go to college, or those who already paid off their loans, or the ones that made smart choices to avoid debt. Every time my neighbor gets a new garage door opener, it comes out of my HOA fees.
And can we imagine the inevitable lineup of students seeking new loans once they learn they don’t have to pay them back? Get in line.
This move seems like a blatant bribe of young voters to jump back on the Biden bandwagon, as polls show that group becoming increasingly cynical with the President over his position on the Israel-Hamas war. And the good will may extend to those voters’ parents, spouses, children, and other loved ones who may benefit, as well.
A quote often attributed to George Bernard Shaw sums it up, “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul, can always count on the support of Paul.”
Curt MacRae is a resident of Coldwater, MI, and publishes columns on multiple Saturdays each month.
All columns are tweeted (@curtmacrae) — comments to rantsbymac@gmail.comrantsbymac@gmail.com
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