Biden’s Voter Payoff Scheme

President Joe Biden announced today that the federal government is canceling up to $20,000 in student loan debt for families making up to $250,000 a year, costing taxpayers another $300 billion. 

Biden’s authority for this move is a mystery. Last summer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said very clearly that Biden cannot do this. She told reporters:

“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness; he does not. He can postpone [payments] . . . but he does not have that power [debt forgiveness]. That has to be an act of Congress.”

Liberal economist Larry Summers, who correctly warned us about Biden’s inflationary socialist spending, warned again that Biden’s latest scheme is throwing more inflationary fuel on the fire. He wrote:

“Student loan debt relief is spending that raises demand and increases inflation. It consumes resources that could be better used helping those who did not, for whatever reason, have the chance to attend college. It will also tend to be inflationary by raising tuitions.” 

This is just more evidence that progressives don’t understand basic economics, and they really don’t get it. 

But what Biden is doing has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with politics. This is obviously an attempt to buy votes and payoff his base voters (young, white, college educated liberals) in what is looking more and more like a cliffhanger of an election this November. 

What’s $300 billion of someone else’s money if it helps you keep power?

That said, the conservatives cannot use purely fiscal arguments to criticize this liberal payoff scheme. They must address the core unfairness of this and how the elites are once again getting more benefits at the expense of working and middle-class Americans.

First, everyone who struggled and sacrificed to pay off their own debts now feels like a sucker. 

Second, as Larry Summers noted, many working-class Americans were unable to go to college. Many Americans who work in the trades, like construction or plumbing, may have taken out loans to buy trucks or tools needed for their specific line of work. Who’s paying off their loans? 

Why is the kid from an upper-middle class family making a six-figure income more deserving of this debt relief, but working-class families who just couldn’t afford college get nothing? 

Just like the left’s subsidies for $70,000 electric cars in the absurdly named “Inflation Reduction Act,” this student loan debt relief is another transfer of wealth from working-class Americans to wealthy elites.