Shot in the Dark

The choppers are in the air

The 1st Biden Air Cav will soon start spraying Agent Green, exfoliating with borrowed dollars whatever canopy of fiscal sanity still remains below.

President Biden told reporters on Thursday that he is considering taking executive action to broadly cancel student loan debt, and a decision may be imminent.

“I am considering dealing with some [student] debt reduction,” Biden said today. However, he appeared to conclusively rule out $50,000 or more in student loan forgiveness. “I am not considering $50,000 [student] debt reduction,” he said. His comment confirms his earlier statements rejecting larger amounts of student loan forgiveness, and would seem to contradict suggestions made earlier this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that Biden was seriously considering cancelling $50,000 or more in student loan debt.

Biden did not specify an exact amount of student loan forgiveness that he is considering, although clearly it would be under $50,000. He also did not address rumors that he is considering imposing income restrictions on student debt cancellation.

The proposed debt cancellation would “only” be for the federal student loan program. Even the Socialist Squadrons at Camp Joe don’t yet dare force private lenders to forgive debt.

Schumer wants the $50,000 per snowflake. Biden may opt for $10,000 per, another number mentioned as a possibility.

Whatever the final number, there will be a cost to the taxpayer. Whatever Treasury bonds were used to lend the money still exist, and would need to paid back and are still charging interest. A freebie amount of $50,000 would cost around a trillion.

Then there’s the moral hazard. If the debt can be forgiven once, it can just as easily be forgiven again. Students will start to borrow with the expectation they won’t have to pay back the loans.

So, this is a step out the back door towards “free” education.

Another aspect that Biden needs to tap dance around is a means test, or some kind of income limit. Student loans are held by more higher income people than lower income. Biden can’t be seen to be handing stacks of cash to “rich” kids. (A lot of student debt goes for graduate schools.) So, he might just make it a welfare program and forgive debt only for lower income people.

Perhaps with their free money, the kiddies can take an economics class or two and discuss the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

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Jeff Kouba

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Comments

20 responses to “The choppers are in the air”

  1. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    This was pretty much inevitable. It’s not a matter of “fairness,” it’s a matter of low enthusiasm for Slow Joe by the all-important young white college graduate vote.
    It’s also just a pinky swear, since the move is of doubtful legality and won’t make its way through the courts until after the election.

  2. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    Higher Ed is already free for a lot of snowflakes, especially “disadvtantaged” and illegal. So this is just a handout to buy votes. But then everybody sees it but will dare not say it.

  3. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    The solution is to reform the Bancrupcy code. They borrowed the money. If it’s too much, let them start over like any other debt.

    Just dropping the debt without any consequence will infuriate people that scrimped and saved to send their kids to college in which I count myself as one.

  4. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Moderation is 🔥

  5. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    The stated rationale for student loans is education is a Social Good and a mind is a terrible thing to waste for lack of a few bucks. I predict Lesko Brandon will tie loan forgiveness to the social utility of the gift recipients.

    Teachers, employees of do-gooder non-profits, legal aid lawyers – forgiven with income limit because Socially Necessary.

    Doctors, nurses, scientists – forgiven regardless of income, because Lab Coats

    Accountants, land surveyors, CDL truck drivers, airline pilots – depends on effectiveness of lobbyists.

    English majors . . . are you freakin’ kidding me? Back of the line, peasant.

  6. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    The reason you can’t discharge student debt in bankruptcy is because the student keeps his education, it can’t be repossessed like an automobile.
    In some sense this was inevitable from the moment Obama put the government in the student loan business.

  7. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    And the reason Obama put the government in the student loan business was to capture the revenue from student loan payments. Democrats needed that income stream to make “Obamacare” revenue neutral.

    If we forgive the loans, we don’t get the revenue, so we, what? Eliminate Obamacare?

    Heh. Heh heh. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

    I crack myself up.

  8. jdm Avatar
    jdm

    President Biden […] is considering taking executive action to broadly cancel student loan debt, and a decision may be imminent.

    I don’t get this. We have a king? Is there anything a president is not able to do with a phone call and stroke of the pen? What is this bull5hit?

  9. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    Obama decided to upend centuries of contract and bankruptcy law and award billions to the UAW, an unsecured bond holder, while basically shafting secured bond holders like the NEA. Not surprising that Biden would consider once again placing the heavy hand of government on the matter and interfering with the contracts that the students signed. I don’t recall a loaded gun being held to my head when I signed my contract, but perhaps today’s generations have had a different experience.

  10. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    That’s why it will have to go to the courts, jdm.
    Say, Garland keeps saying that he is completely independent from the White House. What do you think the odds are that the JD will refuse to defend Biden’s student loan forgiveness?
    Read between the lines of Mr. Kouba’s Biden quotes. Slow Joe would rather not forgive the student loans of people who had expensive educations. Both AOC and Chuck Schumer have endorsed $50k (or more) of debt forgiveness. I think that is because the people with the expensive educations ARE the people who have lost their enthusiasm for Joe Biden. You can’t move the needle on the community college types.

  11. bikebubba Avatar
    bikebubba

    Liberals want subsidies so rich people can buy their electric cars, subsidies so rich people can go to the symphony or ballet, subsidies so rich people can have radio and TV stations to their tastes, and now subsidies so rich people don’t need to pay back their student loans.

    I guess it’s a lot like the Democrats have always been, taking the side of the rich and s**** the poor.

  12. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    When I got out of high school in the late 70s, there was a hard limit on how much you could borrow on a student loan. It was tied to the annual undergrad tuition at UM.
    Sometime in the 90s they changed the annual amount to something close to unlimited because THE USUAL SUSPECTS claimed that the limit kept deserving people from going to better, more expensive universities or grad school. Under the old rules, you couldn’t go to law school on a government student loan. Now you can.

  13. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Actually, MP, you could, if you chose an inexpensive law school and borrowed just enough for tuition, for instance, by working full-time days and attending night classes taught in a former Catholic girls high school building. Ask me how I know.

  14. bosshoss429 Avatar
    bosshoss429

    Yet, almost in the same breath, Pedo Joe says “if the Republicans were interested in helping economic growth, they would help reduce the deficit”, to tout his plan to raise taxes.

  15. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    But, Joe Doakes, that kind of law degree will not get you the status that only white people, Jews, and Asians can get with a JD from Harvard or Yale or whatever.
    And I think the link between annual loan limits and annual tuition went the other way. Colleges set their tuition to whatever the limit was.

  16. Mammuthus Primigenesis Avatar
    Mammuthus Primigenesis

    Hmmm . . . inflation is up, GDP is down . . . I wonder what interest rate we are going to end up paying for the 1.4 trillion bucks Slow Joe & the Dems borrowed so they could pay people not to work?

  17. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    The bankruptcy issue for higher education can easily be solved.

    Revoke the diploma for failure to pay.

    If the student puts “BA Wymen’s Studies” on xer resume, the University of where ever say “no” during the background check.

  18. Blade Nzimande Avatar
    Blade Nzimande

    I worked full time while going to school. I went to a community college for 2 years and transferred to a 4 year program. The GI bill picked up >1/3 of the cost, and I paid the rest as I went.

    When I graduated, I owed $300.

    Of course, I missed out on frat parties, panty raids, sharing bong loads in the dorm and Spring break was called “vacation at home”.

    My kids paid for their share of college according to a sliding scale I set up when they started high school.

    Letting kids off the hook for their financial responsibility is just one more way to corrupt them and lessen their integrity.

  19. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    My father earned $16,000 in ’74 and the state university said that was too much for me to qualify for financial aid for tuition. I was able to get a $1500 student loan at 7% (“that’s cheap money,” my dad said), which pretty much covered two years of tuition. (Being a bright guy, I CLEP-tested out of a year of freshman college classes). I took out a second $1500 loan so I could do a semester in England my senior year. I don’t know which is more laughable today – that $3000 would largely cover three years of tuition, or that 7% interest was considered really low.

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