Here’s why you don’t want to have grads carrying debt

Something weird happened when President Joe Biden announced a student loan forgiveness program last week as part of a larger attempt to address the cost of higher education in the United States.

We know that student debt has crippled the last two generations to the tune of roughly $1.6 trillion, but upon Biden’s announcement, some people became their Drunk Uncle Ed. They settled into their BarcaLounger, slammed back the foot rest, and began to regale everyone with the privations they faced walking to school uphill both ways, where, once they arrived, they scratched out their lessons on the backs of shovels using coal they’d gathered by the train tracks.

And if it was good enough for them ...

Come to think of it, in my day, we took out student loans and worked three jobs, and that didn’t include our soul-crushing work-study program. When everyone else wandered over to the local ice cream shop, we begged off because we couldn’t justify springing for a

(then exorbitant) $2.50 sundae.

Oh. Wait. That wasn’t Drunk Uncle Ed. That was me. I am the daughter of a factory worker and a soldier, and so you bet I took out student loans (and scrounged for scholarships and worked multiple jobs) to get that all-important degree. But honestly? The only modern-day loan forgiveness program that would make me any happier would include cancellation of all student debt, coupled a serious look at the cost of higher education in this country.

Biden’s plan includes up to $20,000 in debt cancellation for Pell Grant recipients, and as much as $10,000 canceled for other federal loan recipients. The relief is aimed at people who make less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for a household. According to a Penn Wharton analysis, roughly threequarters of this benefit affects households with annual incomes of $88,000 or less. (Connecticut’s median household income, from the U.S. Census Bureau, hovers around $80,000.)

Biden’s plan is, at best, a small start, and I’m a little surprised that people would be against alleviating anyone’s debt, as if we’re still in the 1980s and you could still pay for a year in college for less than $10,000.

You can’t and it’s time everybody caught up.

The Education Data Initiative says the average Connecticut student carries debt at $35,162. Nearly 14 percent of Connecticut residents have some kind of student debt, the initiative said. That debt affects all of us, and not just parents with adult children still living in the basement. It can choke a housing market. It can mean that collegeeducated employees still need to rely on social service programs, and who pays for that? You, me, and Drunk Uncle Ed.

Not to be ungenerous here, but naysayers sound like people who’ve restricted their definitions of “neighbor” and “community” to “everybody who sits at my dinner table.” That shortsightedness tripped us up during the pandemic, and it won’t work for us now. Yet there go the GOP and some misguided Democrats questioning the wisdom of college graduates who listened to the rest of us and applied for college loans.

And in this, even a casual observer can hear volleys fired in service to our poorly fought class war. In this case, according to people who oppose this program, the honest truck driver is being forced to pay for some spray-tanned sorority sister’s four-year-long party.

While that makes for great conservative optics — the hard-working middle-class as victim — those folks were notably silent as the government forgave Paycheck Protection Program loans. So it’s OK to help businesses, but not individual students. Got it. Noted. Is here where we discuss that the cancellation of PPP debt benefited some of today’s student loan forgiveness’ biggest critics (including but not limited to Georgia Rep. Marjorie “$183,504” Taylor Greene and Florida Rep. Vern “$2.3 million” Buchanan)?

Do these folks think no one’s keeping records?

Even Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who after Liz Cheney may be the Democrats’ second-favorite Republican, asked on Twitter whether loan forgiveness was the proper way to attract blue collar voters. Of course, this question presupposes that once a blue-collar, always a blue collar, and there are plenty of us walking around who can tell you that is not the case.

Senate Republicans actually took to Twitter to drag out that tired trope about how the cancellation benefits “coastal elites,” which is confusing to me because I am educated and live near the coast, yet I know precisely how government peanut butter tastes on a saltine. The chasm between middle-class and the coastal elites is not so wide, and it can be made smaller with a college degree.

See how that works?

Finally, for the Christians in the pews: You don’t have to be a pillar down at the First Methodist to remember the story about the vineyard owner (Matt. 20, if you’re following along), who, as Jesus told the tale, hired workers in the early morning, and others throughout the day. At the end of the day, the landowner paid workers the same wage, much to the concern of the people hired early in the day.

When they complained, the landowner let them know that they’d all been paid precisely what they’d been told they’d be paid, and perhaps — I’m paraphrasing here — they should stop whining.

I’m not alone in seeing the disconnect among faith-based voters. Late last week, some wag took to social media to post a 1620s oil, “Miracle of the Bread and Fish” by Giovanni Lanfranco, with the headline: “Jesus’s miracle of loaves and fishes was a slap in the face to all the people who brought their own lunch.”

There’s probably a good lesson in there for all of us.