Biden’s College Loan Forgiveness Is Unconstitutional

You can personally benefit from something and still consider it bad public policy.

Here’s why I’m against Biden’s unilateral action:

It’s unconstitutional. Biden is claiming the 2003 HEROS Act and the 1965 Higher Education Act gives him the authority to cancel $300 billion or for that matter all $1.8 trillion student loan debt if he so decrees, which means in theory he could make college “free.” If the Supreme Court takes up Biden’s executive order they’ll likely strike it down because in examining the original intent of the Act(s) they’d conclude that if Congress actually wanted to surrender all authority for student loan cancellation to the executive branch they would’ve explicitly said so in the statutory language.

The Biden administration may secretly hope the Supreme Court strikes it down because if his executive order is allowed to stand then Democrats will be pressured in future presidential primaries to promise to make college “free” with the same stroke of the pen, which if done is something that would hurt the Democratic Party’s ability to enrich academia because taxpayers would demand large cuts to tuition prices. And conversely, if his executive order is allowed to stand then Republicans will be pressured in future presidential primaries to promise to abolish federal student loans altogether since they’d clearly serve as little more than a trojan horse for future forgiveness, which if done would also hurt the Democratic Party’s ability to enrich academia.

It’s regressive. Virtually everyone in their 20’s makes under $125K, but that doesn’t mean that by the time they leverage their Harvard degree that by their late 30’s they aren’t pulling in 6-figures rent-seeking on Wall Street or in DC. If Biden wanted to help those making under $125K then he could’ve simply gotten bipartisan support to cut their taxes by $300 billion.

It’ll hurt economic growth. This policy will increase inflation, the national debt, and take more money from productive demographics to give to unproductive demographics. Back in the day, kids used to work the coal mines and now they’re forced to sit in elementary school then middle school then high school and increasingly college due to what’s called “certification inflation” whereby jobs that once didn’t even require a high school diploma now require a college degree.

It’s one thing if in America spending more money per student than virtually any country on Earth led to more well-adjusted productive members of society, but as anyone who has dispassionately studied our education system can tell you it’s less and less about education and more and more about indoctrination. Kids can’t read Milton Friedman, but they/zer/zim can read enough to vote Democrat.

Ultimately, what’s the solution here? Forgive $10K debt every election cycle? Make it “free”? How has that worked out for K-12? The answer is obvious to anyone truly educated: abolish federal student loans and grants. It’s not our federal government’s responsibility! This would make college more of a free market again with better quality as they’d then compete for students who’d be more limited by what loans the private sector would be willing to give them based on their prospective major’s ability to pay them back. This would lead to fewer fem studies and more STEM, which may not be good for the Left, but it’d be great for our future.