Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Canceling Student Debt

It's such a stupid idea, only lefties could come up with it.  

First off, the debt wouldn't be "canceled".  It would merely be paid by other people--people who couldn't afford college, people who paid off their debt already, people who didn't incur such debt.  Next, every one of those people who took on college debt did so voluntarily; why should they not be required to pay off their debt?  And lastly,  "[t]he fact that households in the upper half of the income distribution and those with graduate degrees hold a disproportionate share of that debt almost never makes it into the narrative."  Having government pay off student debt would be a huge transfer of even more wealth from the lower classes to the upper.

And yet the Democrats keep pushing such a scheme.  The president, however, is backing away from his and his party's bribery scheme:

Joe Biden said Tuesday that he would not eliminate $50,000 in student debt, shooting down a proposal that prominent Democrats introduced this month, but that he is open to some level of loan forgiveness.

"I will not make that happen," Biden said at a CNN town hall in Milwaukee, his first event outside Washington since he took office, in response to an audience member who called on him to commit to cancel at least $50,000 in debt...

Biden faces growing pressure from his own party to take bolder action on student debt and to bypass Congress to do so.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other lawmakers introduced a resolution in early February calling on Biden to use executive action to wipe out up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt for all borrowers, arguing that the secretary of education has broad administrative authority to cancel the debt.

I'm so old, I can remember when executive orders were a sign of fascism, or something.  But in not (yet) bowing to Schumer's and Warren's pressure, Slow Joe didn't do something right--he merely avoided doing something wrong.

2 comments:

Pseudotsuga said...

It was a pitch-perfect bait and switch to the progressive young voters.
And to try doing this by EXECUTIVE ORDER?!
It's only facism if the "wrong" people are doing it, Comrade. For us, it's a brave new world of progress, equity, and unity!

Anonymous said...

Biden doesn't give a rat's tail about any of this. He's only interested in bombing Syria, continuing endless wars, and continuing Obama's legacy, Bush II's legacy, Bill Clinton's legacy, Bush I's legacy, etc.