As we previewed yesterday, Joe Biden played the role of Santa Claus and — without any constitutional authority for executive law-making whatsoever — announced he’s “forgiving” student loans for more than 40 million Americans. (Translation: He’s transferring the obligation for repaying the loans from those who took them out to those who didn’t.) The only difference between our report and his announcement was that he was even more “generous” with taxpayer money than anticipated, extending $20,000 in forgiveness to Pell Grant recipients instead of a measly $10,000. That means the whole giveaway could cost nearly $600 billion instead of only $300 billion as previously estimated.

The official announcement:

To smooth the transition back to repayment and help borrowers at highest risk of delinquencies or default once payments resume, the U.S. Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 or $250,000 for households.

In addition, borrowers who are employed by non-profits, the military, or federal, state, Tribal, or local government may be eligible to have all of their student loans forgiven through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program [emphasis in original].

According to Biden administration estimates, 27 million Americans will qualify for the full $20,000, and 20 million will be debt free at the stroke of Biden’s pen.

There are other goodies mixed in as well, such as extending the pandemic payment freeze for another four months — resulting in nearly three years of that policy despite an unemployment rate of just 2% for people with at least a bachelor’s degree. On top of that, Biden plans to cover unpaid interest for some borrowers, to “raise the amount of income that is considered non-discretionary income and therefore is protected from repayment,” and to “forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments, instead of 20 years, for borrowers with loan balances of $12,000 or less.”

Peter the high-school graduate plumber was just robbed blind to pay (and win the vote of) Paul the PhD.

As Mark Alexander observes, “Biden’s scheme for adults who have student loan obligations, may be a win-win for Democrats, regardless of whether it is green-lighted or red-lighted by the courts. The Demos’ political calculus: If the scheme does not pass legal muster, that will leave millions of voters mad at Republicans for not forcing somebody else to pay their loans.”

Biden ran for president as the supposedly “moderate” alternative to radical socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Yet few Democrats have been more key than those two in the push to institute what they finally bullied Biden into doing. So who really won the 2020 election?

Maybe the answer to that is the White House staffers who stand to benefit from Biden’s gift.

As we noted yesterday, even Nancy Pelosi declared last year that Biden has no authority to do this. Biden himself said in December 2020 that claiming authority for the president to do this is “pretty questionable.”

Well, Barack Obama set the precedent for such “fundamental transformation” when he repeatedly declared he had no authority to grant amnesty to the so-called “dreamers,” only to turn around and issue the DACA declaration anyway. Biden has done the same thing with student loans.

Moreover, for the Party of Fairness™, this is decidedly unfair. “Biden is effectively telling all the people who didn’t go to college, those who went to college but didn’t borrow money, and those who went to college and already paid off their loans that they are suckers,” write the editors of National Review in a blistering editorial. “The lucky few who just so happen to have student debt at this arbitrary moment get a windfall at the expense of everyone else.”

The editors offer this far more accurate framing of what Biden is doing: “Radical progressives violate Constitution and statute to further enrich the well-off at the expense of everyone else.”

It’s not just the predictable opponents who run conservative news publications who object, either. Even Biden’s leftist fanboys at The Washington Post understand the problem: “Widely canceling student loan debt is regressive. It takes money from the broader tax base, mostly made up of workers who did not go to college, to subsidize the education debt of people with valuable degrees.” They hedge on the power question, saying it’s “unclear” whether Biden has legal authority under the 1965 Higher Education Act. That waffling is at least an improvement on the scribes at The New York Times, who nowhere in their news story bother to mention even a hint at a question about Biden’s authority.

Here’s the bottom line: This is a twisted transfer of wealth to highly paid employed people with advanced degrees at the expense of people who either already paid off their own loans or never took them in the first place. It’ll cause more inflation, especially of college tuition as universities scramble to fund their ever-ballooning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” departments with the largesse. It might win some votes from the folks already inclined to vote Democrat, but it will — and should — enrage millions of Americans who understand the gross injustice of it all. And Joe Biden has no legitimate power to do any of it in the first place. Unfortunately, that’s the American Democrats have created in 2022.

(Updated)