Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren released a cringy video appeal to young voters this week, letting them know that Senate Democrats were integral in the White House’s efforts to “cancel student debt.”
Sure, they’re bragging about saddling the average taxpayer with the debt of the privileged college graduates. But let’s not overlook the fact that Warren and Schumer are also bragging about helping the president circumvent the institution they supposedly run.
It is no surprise the leader of what is allegedly the greatest deliberative lawmaking body in the world — tasked with checking the power of the executive branch — is telling us he will sell out the legislative branch for a few votes. A few years back, Schumer told Rachel Maddow it may be “a good idea for President Biden to call a climate emergency,” which would have given the White House nearly unfettered power to run the economy by fiat. If President Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or Joe McRedState took the same power, Schumer would rend his garments.
These are the same people, incidentally, who’ve deputized themselves as democracy’s great defenders. Thank you, heroes.
For partisan Democrats who don’t give a whit about constitutional order, the student loan racket has no real downside.
Biden’s promise to relieve borrowers of their responsibilities and life choices may well help him pick up a few younger voters. They tell me student loan “forgiveness” — a favorite euphemism of Democrats and thus the media — is quite popular in polls. And why not? “Forgiveness” is an optimistic word that makes it sound as if the loans are magically dissipating into the ether.
It should be obvious to anyone with a brain — even people with college degrees — that the president has neither the constitutional authority nor the real-world ability to “forgive” loans that have already been borrowed and spent. Biden can unilaterally break existing contracts and transfer the cost of those loans onto others, many of whom have either repaid their own student loans or never borrowed any money to begin with.
I do wonder what opinion polls would look like if pollsters started asking voters whether they believe their children should be on the hook for a stranger’s Ph.D. in journalism or gender studies. My guess is that we would see significantly different numbers.
Now, as for Republicans who attack the plan, Democrats will merely accuse them of hypocrisy and wanting to undermine the future. If there is anything conservatives hate more than children, it’s children with an edumacation.
That’s only the start. “Republicans are suing to make sure that Americans have to pay more in student loans, to make sure that you have to pay more interest to banks on your student loans,” was, for instance, the mind-blowingly dishonest way Maddow framed the case against Biden’s power grab.
Which reminds me that loan forgiveness also poses a serious moral hazard. There are no limits to the types of degrees we will be “forgiving.” Take Maddow, who earned a bachelor’s degree in public policy and a doctorate in political science. If anything, we should be paying Americans not to get useless degrees that turn them into insufferable authoritarian nuisances, not egging them on.
Then again, the White House has been similarly dishonestly accusing Biden’s student loan scheme of having benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program.
This is bunk, of course. The state sent PPP checks so that employment wouldn’t crater after it forced the economy to shut down. No one compelled you to borrow $200,000 for that political science degree. Unlike student loans, PPP was intended to be a cash transfer from the government. The loans were structured to be forgivable. No one broke a contract. No one in the White House changed the parameters of those contracts because would-be voters began whining.
Indeed, the president didn’t transfer the responsibility of PPP payments to other businesses by decree. The law was passed by Congress, not declared by some corrupt politician desperate to stay in office.
Nor, it should be noted, is the student bailout anything like any corporate bailouts that were meant to save industries and jobs. They may have been wrong and counterproductive, but they were passed by the legislature.
The White House is basically just shaming Republicans for trusting the government to help them. So, come to think of it, maybe they deserve it.
Finally, if Biden fails and the Supreme Court (yet again) overturns another student loan “forgiveness” scam because it is a clear usurpation of the separation of power, Democrats will just turn their attention back to their favorite pastime of smearing and delegitimizing the court.
For partisan Democrats, it’s a win, win, win.
For the constitutional order, it’s a disaster. As usual.
