President Biden campaigned on eliminating federal student loan debt and folks are complaining that he has not lived up to that promise. Critics say the only way the Democrats will not get hammered in the midterm elections is if that promise is delivered. Biden recently said he is not likely to forgive debts of $50,000, and that it would be something less. Nearly 43 million Americans have student loans and they're responsible for roughly $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt. I had Lindsey Burke, Director for the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation about the ever-growing student loan issue. She explained to me how loan forgiveness would be a bad policy that would impact everyone.
So if federal student loan forgiveness is going to be a thing, who ends up paying for those loans?
Of course it's the American taxpayer who pays for it. That money doesn't just go away, it doesn't evaporate into thin air. It simply gets shifted. The burden of repayment just is handed over to taxpayers. It's really important to remember that about two thirds of Americans don't hold bachelor's degrees today. They have made a conscious decision not to attend college or were not able to attend college, and yet these forgiveness proposals would mean they would have to pay off a loan they didn't sign on the dotted line for. The New York Federal Reserve Bank published a study last week, stating that even if $10,000 per borrower was forgiven, it would cost taxpayers over $320 million.
What’s the end game? Would this be just a one time gratuitous thing that the Biden Administration is talking about? Hundreds of thousands of kids are borrowing more money every year.
There can’t be an end game if you forgive this student loan debt with a one time payment. The federal government makes it very easy to access student loan payments and student loans and to get in debt… I think the end game among those on the left is free college, where there aren't loans taken out in the future. It's just free at the point of delivery, or taxpayer funded.
Detractors of student loan forgiveness ask, why take on the loan if you won’t be able to pay it off or get something out of it? I've yet to hear a legitimate answer to that from folks advocating for loan forgiveness.
A college degree doesn't enable you to repay your student loan. We certainly shouldn't ask somebody else to repay that student loan. There is such a long list of individuals who made smart decisions for themselves to avoid that debt. Student loan forgiveness is the height of unfair policy. Again, to hand federal student loan debt over to all Americans is just unfair.
