Student loan forgiveness is a Schumer-Warren gift to the well-off
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/student-loan-forgiveness-is-a-schumer-warren-gift-to-the-well-off/2021/02/09/75877a64-6b08-11eb-9f80-3d7646ce1bc0_story.html
One drama of Joe Biden’s infant presidency was foreshadowed 13 months ago in Iowa when a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, answered a question. Her “a program for every problem” repertoire
included as much as $50,000 of forgiveness for indebted students or former students from households making less than $100,000, declining to zero for $250,000 households. An Iowan said to her:
“My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money [so that] she doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?”
Warren: “Of course not.”
Iowan: “So you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?”
Of course: Activist government usually serves those who know how to activate it — relatively affluent and articulate complainers. Last November,
Adam Looney wrote in
The Post that, “About 56 percent of student debt is owed by those with masters or professional degrees, and almost 35 percent of loan balances are owed by individuals in the top 20 percent of income distribution.” The
five degrees responsible for most debt are: medical and law, bachelor’s and master’s in business, and bachelor of science for nursing. The typical college graduate with debt ($28,500) can retire it in 20 years with $181 monthly payments.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) wants Biden to accomplish Warren’s project “
with a flick of a pen.” Schumer wants the legislative branch to be irrelevant to one of the largest transfers of wealth — more than $1 trillion — in U.S. history, a sum equal, according to Looney, to “the total amount spent on cash welfare since 1980.” Progressives say the 1965
Higher Education Law, which authorizes the education secretary (there wasn’t one until 1979) to “compromise” federal student loans (there were none until 1958, and few in 1965), empowers an executive branch official to dispose of a gigantic sum. And federal student loan forgiveness might be followed by another pen flick — forgiveness of federal loans to students’ parents:
The New York Times reports that under the Parent PLUS program, 10 to 15 percent of parents of undergraduates take out loans “that typically grow to over $64,000 by graduation day.”
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