February 13, 2025

Biden’s Student-Loan Lawlessness Must Not Go Unanswered

If congressional Republicans won’t push back on the president’s ‘loan forgiveness’ schemes, what purpose do they serve?

Since the summer of last year, Joe Biden has spent $130 billion transferring money from Americans who did not take out loans to pay for college to Americans who did take out loans to pay for college. Over the next few years, Biden intends to spend an additional $345 billion in this manner. Question: How are we going to pay for this perfidy?

Or, rather: Who is going to pay for this? Obviously, the answer can’t be “taxpayers.” Sure, in the short run, that’ll be how these transfers work. But in the long run? After Biden is out of power? Presumably, we are not to expect that the people who didn’t take out those loans and spend them on a service that they received ought to be taxed to pay for those who did? That would be absurd. So I’ll ask again: Where is the cash going to come from? Are we going to claw the money back from the people who were given the free ride? Are we going to take it from the universities themselves — many of which have enormous, unassessed endowments? Are we going to give a tax break to anyone who didn’t receive this largesse? All of these options have their upsides and downsides. At least one of them must become law.

Why? Because what President Biden has done here represents an extraordinary violation of the social compact, that’s why. This isn’t alms for the poor; it’s a brazen cash-grab by Joe Biden’s friends. Biden likes college graduates in a way that he doesn’t like small-business owners, plumbers, or waitresses, so he has decided to send the property of small-business owners, plumbers, and waitresses to those college graduates. That’s it. That’s the whole game. There’s no principle here; the debts owed by others remain untouched. There’s no reform here; the education system remains exactly as it was before this started. The game is exactly how it looks: Peter, general contractor, has been robbed to pay Paul, Ph.D. It’s shameless class politics — and not in that dishonest boy-made-good-from-Scranton way that Joe Biden likes to pretend. To the victors, the spoils.

Interesting Read…