Shifting the Debt
Biden administration’s loan forgiveness moves don’t fix the problem
One of the promises Joe Biden made when he was elected president was to forgive massive amounts of student debt.
And he came up with a plan. But the U.S. Supreme Court shot it down, ruling the president had no such authority to do so with the consent of Congress.
But that didn’t stop the Biden administration. Since the court ruling last year, the administration has found ways to wipe out a significant amount of student debt through creative — some say too creative — modifications of existing programs.
So far, more than 3.5 million borrowers have had about $127 billion cleared through temporary expansion of such schemes as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.
And on Wednesday, the White House announced another round of student loan forgiveness that will automatically clear the slate of 153,000 borrowers to the tune of $1.2 billion as part of the Saving on Valuable Education repayment program the administration came up with in August.
Critic, particularly Republicans in Congress, say the president is defying the nation’s highest court. The Biden administration says it has the power to correct what it terms “past administrative failures” in the programs.
No doubt those whose debt has or will be been forgiven are happy. But debt doesn’t really go away. It’s just shifted from the borrower to someone else.
And who gets to foot the bill for all the Biden administration’s creativity? You do, Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer.
Just about everybody agrees there’s a problem with massive student debt in this country. What to do about it is the big question. We are willing to give the Biden administration the benefit of the doubt here. It’s finding ways to address the problem. But simply going around the Supreme Court, bypassing Congress and shifting debt from those who willingly took out the loans to taxpayers isn’t the fix we need — especially when you consider one lawsuit has already been filed challenging the move and more may be coming. That’s not good for borrowers.
It’s long past time Republicans and Democrats in Congress, along with the White House, came together in good faith to find a workable, longterm solution to the ever-increasing cost of higher education and the crippling debt load that often goes along with it.