Editors at National Review Online tackle President Biden’s latest bad idea.
“President Biden announces student loan relief for borrowers who need it most,” says the Whote House.
Every part of that sentence is wrong.
“President Biden announces” — not really. If there were ever a time when Biden’s progressive supporters are ventriloquizing the president, this is it. Biden is, of course, fully culpable as the man with whom the buck stops. But student-loan forgiveness is a policy that has been announced time and again by radical progressives on the Internet for over two years — and pretty much nobody else.
The issue does not rate highly among voters in general, who are overwhelmingly concerned with inflation. Loan forgiveness certainly will not help inflation, and 59 percent of Americans and even an Obama economist are concerned it will make inflation worse. The median American adult does not have any student debt because the median American adult never borrowed any money to go to college. Only 37.9 percent of Americans over the age of 25 even have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
After about a year and a half of online harassment from the sliver of the population for whom this policy is beneficial, Biden has allowed himself to be bullied into violating the Constitution on their behalf. Even Nancy Pelosi has said the president doesn’t have the power to forgive student debt. His staff, which collectively owes millions in student debt, will no doubt be happy. But the presidency is the one office for which the entire country votes, and for it to be captured by a progressive fringe is a travesty.
“Student loan relief” — again, not really. “Relief” implies the disappearance of a malady, but this is merely a transference. Biden’s student-loan plan will cost about $2,000 per taxpayer. It completely erases the purported (and exaggerated) deficit reduction of the reconciliation bill Biden signed just over a week ago.
