Earlier this week, The Gateway Pundit reported that Nancy Pelosi went on the record stating that the President doesn’t have the authority to forgive student loan debt. Joe Biden has proposed the Department of Education forgive up to $20,000 in Student Loan debt anyways, despite once agreeing with Pelosi’s position.
Back on February 17, 2021, Joe Biden told a member of the audience in a Town Hall that he will not increase the proposed $10,000 student loan forgiveness to $50,000 as she suggested. Now, however, he has doubled that number for many students from $10,000 to $20,000.
The question is whether or not he has that authority to unilaterally forgive any debt. According to his own response in that very same Town Hall to the very same question, Joe Biden said he does not have that authority. He can delay or postpone payments, but he cannot forgive them. Only Congress can do that, as Pelosi stated.
But still, Biden is attempting to circumvent the Constitution with his own unilateral authority:
“The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients” with the stipulation that student loans will, again, be postponed until January 2023.
What’s a more practical explanation for this unilateral unconstitutional action is the last two sentences: repayments will be extended “one final time” and resumed in January 2023, just after the midterms. Because Joe admits he doesn’t have the authority to forgive $50,000, but somehow, he can forgive $10,000? Perhaps there is a segment of the Constitution unread by all that has limitations as to how much leniency the President has before Congress is necessary to intervene in budgetary issues? Or perhaps its an empty promise to garner a little motivation and excitement behind a dwindling party that is quickly running this country straight into the ground.
This is another ploy in an election year to drum up the 20-something base the democrats rely on so heavily. Biden has had two years of democrat control of both chambers of Congress and they have collectively done nothing to address this issue. And even if Congress does somehow get on board, “forgiveness” still does nothing to address the underlying problem: skyrocketing college tuition costs and predatory loans from the government. If these two issues go unchanged, debt forgiveness is just a band-aid. We’ll just circle back to the same predicament we’re in now in a decade or so.
Biden actually addresses this issue at the end of his Town Hall bumbling (58:50 mark) in a way that even Republicans could and should get behind: fix the loans and incentivize the reduction in the cost of tuition! College tuition is up 945% since 1980 and over 40% of college students eventually drop out.
The Daily News writes:
“Perhaps more important than the cancellations are plans to restructure income-based repayment programs, raising the discretionary income threshold, halving the percentage of income that must be paid for undergraduate loans, shortening the time frame until forgiveness and, crucially, preventing high interest from ballooning the debt as long as borrowers pay monthly…
All of this is a temporary fix unless there is action to constrain ever-growing college costs, which means at minimum investments into public higher education after years of chronic underfunding.”
The last line about investing in public higher education is debatable. There is rarely any industry that is bettered by an overreaching federal government. Higher education would be no different. But at least it is a discussion that won’t leave Americans paying for a service they never received on behalf of someone who cannot fulfill their own contractual obligation. Many have argued that there is already too much pressure to attend a university out of high school while neglecting the far less expensive trade and vocational schools that lead to immediate careers in very well paying jobs.
The bottom line is that its an election year. The Biden administration has had an abysmal two year run and they are desperate for anything to garner a little bit of excitement in the midterms for democrats. And because of this, legitimate middle ground solutions are being ignored in lieu of political divisiveness.
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