Student Loan Forgiveness Is a Political Bribe

Buying votes for the Democratic Party is the only possible justification for such an unfair giveaway of taxpayer money.

By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon. Excerpts: 

"Those earning in the top 40% owe 60% of all student-loan debt. Very high earners with doctorates, medical degrees or law degrees owe 40% of all student debt. In the long history of the world’s debt-forgiveness debate, few have ever had a weaker case than American student-loan debtors. President Reagan viewed their argument for relief as so lame that he garnished the wages of government employees to collect defaulted student loans.

Even the liberal Urban Institute finds that “debt forgiveness plans would be regressive—providing the largest monetary benefits to those with the highest incomes.” And since politics has always been its sole justification, what does it say when Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet rejects its political advantages? “It offers nothing to Americans who paid off their college debts or those who chose a lower price college,” he said earlier this month. “It ignores the majority of Americans who never went to college, some of whom have debts that are just as staggering and just as unfair.”"

"But as politics drives debt forgiveness ever larger, its costs surge and its destructive effect on the economy and social fabric mounts. Government becomes little more than a piñata that voters bash until the goodies fall out. Where does this process end?

The most consequential falsehood in modern American political history was the promise that under ObamaCare if you liked your health plan you could keep it. Yet that same legislation carried a second whopper. The Congressional Budget Office projected that the same bill would pay for $19 billion of ObamaCare’s cost by nationalizing private student debt. Forgiveness and forbearance have already cost taxpayers $31 billion, $8 billion of which was granted to public employees who have greater job security, better pension benefits and higher wages than the average American worker. Mr. Biden’s minimum offer would cost $380 billion more, and Senate Democrats want $950 billion forgiven."