The Biden administration’s misinformation, pandering, and duplicity continues unabated.
The so-called pause on student-loan repayments, which began more than two years ago under former President Donald Trump, has long outlived any benefits, yet President Joe Biden caved to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s extremist wing last week by extending the moratorium. It will now continue until September because, apparently, borrowers need more time.
This gained applause from socialists, who naturally want the president to go further and nullify all $2 trillion in student-debt.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain recently crowed on a left-wing podcast that “Joe Biden, right now, is the only president in history where no one’s paid on their student loans for the entirety of his presidency.”
Is this political stunt something to boast about? And it’s hardly true. Student loans were obviously not a feature of 18th or early 19th century government.
Klain, who many feel actually runs the administration, then audaciously mentioned the prospect of full “student debt forgiveness,” despite Biden’s continuous balking at that policy.
Look, everyone has debt — vehicles, credit card, mortgages — so why the focus on a small pool of voters, while aggravating a far larger population?
No swing voters or normal folks asked for this latest massive government intervention.
In fact, this issue was conspicuously absent from Biden’s lengthy State of the Union address that included dozens of other progressive dreams.
Like similar moratoriums, it is a backwards gift to the privileged. Graduates now have 25 months during which they’ve saved about $100 billion. The COVID pandemic has receded to where there are now too many open jobs and too few applicants.
If not solely ideological, it’s also overwhelmingly cultural, since educational borrowers skew from wealthier families, earning degrees that enable them to repay loans faster.
College graduates also had a much easier time maintaining employment during the coronavirus slow down than others.
Media members supplement the crusade because they identify with those carrying loan obligations. My wife and I have schooling debt, so I could empathize, but I also have common sense.
There’s no reason working-class folks who made sensible decisions should be targeted to foot the bill for college-educated elites.
Such “forgiveness” also lets profligate colleges off the hook for soaring tuition and fees. The higher education complex needs accountability for their crony capitalism, not bailouts.
I envy an electrician or plumber who makes a good living quickly out of trade school with no liabilities. But the aforementioned elites don’t pursue dangerous occupations or risk working without guaranteed income.
Yes, elites have romanticized and elevated higher education, convincing many who shouldn’t be there (about half still fail to get a degree) to waste their money and valuable time. But that’s on the Bernie Sanders-Warren wing, not Republicans. They’re the ones totally out of touch with Americans.
Why should taxpayers who instead moved on to adulthood bail out people who decided they could afford years of university decadence? A skeptic might deem this pandering a pay-off to a partisan constituency at the expense of responsible Americans.
With even left-leaning columnists criticizing the plan, it’s clear Team Biden’s foolhardy move undermines their claims of capably overseeing the economy and pandemic.
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
