Shell games

Moving money around

“Because of the fixes my administration has made, we have now canceled student debt for over 870,000 public service workers—compared to only about 7,000 public service borrowers ever receiving forgiveness prior to my administration. And through all of our various student debt relief actions, nearly four million Americans have had their student debt canceled under my administration.”

—The president of the United States, last week

No, sir. Nearly four million Americans have had their student debt moved under your administration.

There is a battle going on in Washington (isn’t there always?) about previous student loan laws passed by Congress, how those laws can be stretched, if the president has the authority to wave a magic wand and take student debt away from certain Americans, or whether Congress should create more laws giving relief to specific people. Things will certainly play out in the usual ways: in the political arena, then eventually the courts.

But those who want the government to relieve all these people of their obligations have already won the battle for the definitions. They are calling this effort one to “cancel” student debt.

That student debt can’t be canceled. It doesn’t just disappear. The debt goes somewhere.

And when the federal government cancels student debt (ugh, now we’re doing it!) for individuals, the debt goes on the national credit card, i.e., the national debt.

Then everybody is on the hook for the money. Including no telling how much in interest, now and in the future. Doubtless, people not even born yet will be responsible for paying back a lot of this money.

This isn’t an especially progressive idea. People who have never gone to college, or who worked their way through college to come out of it without debt, or those who went deep into debt to get their degrees but paid the money back, will have to pay for all those Americans who have been bought out by the Biden administration.

The money paid for college. It paid professors. It paid for books and lodging.

None of that disappears. It just goes on the credit card. And the last we looked, the balance was approaching $35 trillion.