Leave the G.I. Bill out of it, Liz
Forgiving billions in student debt would alienate a majority of Americans who did not go to college.
The G.I. Bill is for people who have served their country.
The proposed federal student loan bailout is of people who have not.
One is a well-earned, well-deserved benefit, a hand up.
The other is an ill-conceived welfare payoff, a handout.
So, it is surprising that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard professor no less, would link the two in her zealous campaign to cancel $50,000 per borrower in federal student loan debt.
It is true, as Warren said in an “On the Record” television interview last weekend, that the G.I. Bill has allowed millions of veterans to get a college degree and better themselves as they bettered the nation.
It is also true that those indebted college graduates of today would presumably do the same.
The difference is that the veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq Afghanistan and elsewhere earned their benefits by serving their country. The indebted college borrowers have served no one but themselves.
And it is also safe to say that few, if any, of the indebted college students, heading toward their safe rooms, have any idea of how being shot at in a war zone can concentrate the mind. It is equal to a Harvard degree.
There is some $1.75 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. The average student borrower was paying off $300 a month before President Biden issued a moratorium on payments.
Now they are paying nothing, and Warren would keep it that way. “It is the right thing to do,” she said.
She said the cancellation of student loan debt would economically “lift the entire nation” just as the G.I. Bill did following World War II.
Meanwhile, Biden is considering canceling $10,000 of debt per student borrower while progressives like Warren and others are calling for upping the sum to $50,000.
No one knows what goes on in Biden’s brain, but if he thinks he can appease the progressives with a measly $10,000, he is mistaken.
And forgiving billions in student debt would alienate a majority of Americans who did not go to college, but who would be expected to pay off the loans for those who did. Instead of seeking college degrees, these people became truckers, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics and so on.
It would also turn off the students who saved and worked their way through college without federal loans, or who paid theirs off after graduating. Do they get a rebate?
The fact is that the cancellation of the loans would do nothing for the working class but would benefit all those lucky enough to not only graduate from college but go on to become doctors and lawyers while amassing huge loans along the way.
While cancelling student loans has been the main topic of conversation, less attention is paid to the soaring cost of college tuition, or the huge salaries paid to professors and administrators.
Warren, for example, was earning $400,000 as a Harvard professor, which is what the President of the United States is paid. Tuition at Harvard is $60,000.
. Marty Meehan, president of UMass, who is raising the tuition of $24,000, is paid is paid $769,500. The governor of Massachusetts earns $185,000.
If the loans are to be cancelled, the student borrowers should be forced to give something back in return.
They should volunteer to serve a year in the military, for instance, if the military would have them. They could work for programs dealing with the drug-addicted and the homeless or help out at the southern border where thousands of illegal immigrants are crossing over daily. They could even volunteer to work in in schools or for police office work, freeing cops to work the streets.
They could do something for their country, the way the G.I.s did instead of taxing Americans who did not go to college to pay for their free ride.
That would be “the right thing to do.”
Or, God forbid, they could pay the money back.