Biden expected to cancel $6 billion in student loan debt
The 'Outnumbered' panel reacted to the report and the potential repercussions associated with the move.
Policymakers and millions of Americans are rightfully worried about the headlines that President Joe Biden is seriously considering mass student loan forgiveness for 44 million borrowers. The ramifications of such a policy for taxpayers, students, and our society cannot be overstated. Blanket student loan forgiveness will lead to more inflation-filled deficit spending and the removal of any incentive for schools and students to practice financial responsibility.
Yet, while members of Congress and talking heads are distracted by what Biden might do on student loans, they’re missing the widespread debt cancellation happening right before their eyes — and that’s exactly what the president wants.
Take the Department of Education’s recent announcement providing loan forgiveness waivers for borrowers with longer term repayment plans. The department notes that this action will lead to the automatic cancellation of student loan debt for 40,000 borrowers, who were supposedly promised forgiveness and harmed by the broken system Democrats created. Yet, when you look below the surface and into the details of this action, you’ll find the Biden administration may have canceled as much as $211 billion in outstanding student loan debt for over 4 million borrowers — many who were never eligible for forgiveness.
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Moreover, when combined with the windfall provided through the repayment pause and his re-write of Public Service Loan Forgiveness, Biden is writing off as much as $400 billion with the stroke of a pen; that is true harm.
However, that’s just an estimate. The department is refusing to provide a cost analysis for the student loan pause or the series of waivers and "fresh starts" that impact over 40 million borrowers and the country’s 150 million taxpayers. Clearly the administration is doing this behind closed doors because it knows this is not sound fiscal policy or even remotely justified as "targeted relief," but rather a blatant political ploy. It’s not a stretch to assume they are doing as much as they can to bow to progressives before November.
Biden knows this radical policy is unpopular among millions of Americans. But, by characterizing his administration’s actions like the waiver for government and nonprofit employees as making a broken program "live up to its promise" for public servants, it’s easy to convince taxpayers that providing $100,000 in tax-free student loan forgiveness to doctors and Georgetown law students is a noble act.
Democrats are right, the program is broken. But Biden didn’t fix it; he instead eliminated the income test and expanded it to ineligible borrowers and high-level Democrat campaign staff and left the single mother of three working the night shift and paying $5 a gallon at the pump to foot the bill.
Even the repayment pause is a Trojan horse for loan forgiveness, costing taxpayers over $150 billion to date. While President Biden’s inflation crisis has left hardworking Americans struggling to put gas in the tank and food on the table, its provided de facto loan forgiveness to the tune of $5,000 for every borrower (and $10,000 if you went to medical school).
In other words, the Biden administration believes white-collar college graduates needed a two-year paid vacation from their monthly loan bills and the rest of America needed a tax increase to pay for it.
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Since taking office, the Biden administration has transformed the federal student loan program into retroactive "free college" for the high-income households that hold 60 percent of the debt being forgiven. Yet the biggest scam is that next year, the federal government is handing out $100 billion in new loans to over 8 million students without reforming this broken system.
Pay no mind to the graduate students who can tap unlimited taxpayer dollars to fund useless graduate degrees — including the 40 percent of Master’s degree holders who are left with degrees that fail to produce a positive return.
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There is little doubt that many of these students will also expect loan forgiveness, and the schools they attend will increase already-skyrocketing tuition costs because they know Democrats will simply steal from the wallets of taxpayers to pay for it. If Biden truly wanted to help students, he would instruct the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to go after the Department of Education for its predatory lending practices or halt student lending altogether—but I won’t hold my breath.
To my fellow Americans who are concerned about the severe consequences of mass loan forgiveness, it’s time to wake up. Biden’s student loan scam is well underway.