In Brief: Biden’s Student Loan Non Sequiturs
“Democrats are so beholden to academia as a political weapon that they dare not criticize it.”
We’ve covered Joe Biden’s student loan heist and wealth transfer here and here. But when Biden made a speech about the whole thing, “Bonchie” over at RedState made a couple of key observations about the president’s comments. He set it up by saying, “The move is morally reprehensible, forcing an electrician who paid for their technical training to now pay for the gender studies degree of some far-left kook making $100K a year in an academic position.”
One ABC News reporter did stick her foot in the deep end, though, with a question about fairness regarding those who paid off their student loans are chose not to borrow. What followed was again incomprehensible.
ABC’s @KarenTravers: “Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans?”
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 24, 2022
Biden: “Is it fair to people who…do not own multibillion dollar businesses? They see why these guys getting all the tax credits? Is that fair? What do you think?” pic.twitter.com/R3WeeLkdI1
What is the logic there? It seems to be that because the government has hosed taxpayers in the past to give tax credits to big businesses (something most conservatives oppose), we should hose them again to pay off the loans of people with graduate degrees. But even then, that makes no sense because a tax credit does not have to be paid for by definition. It is simply the absence of the government levying a tax. When you “cancel” student debt, that money has already been paid out and the loan is now in default. That money has to come from somewhere.
There was also whiffs of racism and rambling incoherence in Biden’s remarks, but Bonchie concludes:
Yet, out of all the stupid stuff, the president said in his presser, the one thing that stood out to me was one thing he didn’t say. Namely, that the university system is scamming people and needs to be reformed.
Biden: “The cost of education beyond high school has gone up significantly … Many states have cut back support for their state universities, leaving students to pick up more of the tab.” pic.twitter.com/JNx7T8A6EH
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) August 24, 2022
According to Biden, the student debt problem is caused by everyone except the very universities that are charging $100-200K for a meaningless piece of paper. In any other industry, these institutions would be shut down for fraud. But Democrats are so beholden to academia as a political weapon that they dare not criticize it.
What that means is that nothing will actually change. Within a few years, the “debt crisis” will be back at the same levels it is today. The universities will continue to jack up tuition as they spend gobs of money on pointless administrative positions and overpaid tenured professors. Meanwhile, their hundreds of billions of dollars in endowments will remain untouched while the sales guy down at Home Depot gets to foot the bill for their malfeasance. It’s grotesque, and if Republicans can’t make this a winning issue, what is the point?
