How do you spell relief?

Administration’s way: A-N-N-U-L L-O-A-N-S

“From Day One of my administration, I vowed to fix the student loan system and make sure higher education is a pathway to the middle class—not a barrier to opportunity. I won’t back down from using every tool at our disposal to get student loan borrowers the relief they need to reach their dreams.”

—President Joe Biden, last week.

Who knew that a college education was a barrier to opportunity?

Last week the administration said it would speed up the process on what it calls a new “repayment” plan for those who are still paying off their college loans. (Note the scare quotes.)

Some government dodge called the Saving on a Valuable Education plan was supposed to kick in come July. The administration wants it to begin in February instead.

What it does is plenty. But mainly it will cancel student loans for those who borrowed

12K or less, and have been paying on those loans for at least 10 years. The feds don’t know, or didn’t say, how many people that would affect. Here’s guessing not a lot. Who pays on a $12,000 loan for 10 years?

But the step is intended to push the nation in a direction.

President Biden, when he was Candidate Biden, campaigned on making community college free. That is, tuition-free. Because few things in life are free. Those professors would still have to be paid, and the lights would have to be kept on. The cost would have been transferred to taxpayers. Or put on the national credit card, which already carries a $34 trillion balance.

But President Biden couldn’t get his tuition-free community college plan through Congress. By forgiving loans for $12,000 or below, this is a back-door way to get to the goal.

Republicans complain that this is also a bribe for votes. Of course it is. It’s American politics, and not just American politics. Republicans do the same when given the chance.

Beyond politics, some of us worry that, once this first step is taken, many more will follow in that direction. Already payments are linked to income. And the administration hasn’t given up on mass cancellation of student debt. (It is trying to rework legislative wording to use a different legal authority that would stand up to the Supreme Court’s questions.)

So what? you may ask. Or, if you have a lot of student debt, you might say: Hooray!

But this isn’t exactly a progressive move, is it? There are many folks who have never gone to college and have never taken a loan. They will collectively be on the hook for those who have. Imagine what the plumber might think for having to partially sponsor the college education of the engineer. And what about all those people who have taken college loans and paid back every dime? Now they’ll be on the hook, or their children will be, for more.

What about those who took minimum loans, and worked while taking classes to make ends meet? Are they saps? They might feel like that soon enough.

Don’t those who have these educations have the wherewithal to handle their bills themselves?

Which brings us to another point: What about responsibility?

Those who took these loans signed a promise to pay them back, whether 12K or 100K, or they did once upon a time. We suspicion that there are many college students today taking the maximum loans thinking that, at the very least, Uncle Sucker will pay for some of it. And perhaps hoping that Uncle Sucker will pay for all of it.

Rewarding financial irresponsibility brings more financial irresponsibility. Kids today are educable. Especially college kids.

But the president doesn’t seem to mind teaching this lesson. Actually, he seems determined to teach it.