Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Biden Doesn’t Care If College Graduates Actually Get Any Money
Our Constitution, which President Biden swore to uphold, says that the President cannot spend taxpayers’ money. No money can be spent from the federal Treasury unless Congress votes on it, and passes a law. Our Founders, apparently, anticipated that we might have the occasional scoundrel in the office of President, who might consider using Treasury funds for political purposes. They were, unlike my leftist friends, familiar with human nature.
Thus, when President Biden decided to give tens of billions of dollars from the Treasury to young college graduates who might vote Democrat, he could have proposed legislation to that effect. As Presidents have always done. And it may very well have passed. But he didn’t do that. His lawyers just made up a legal excuse, and Mr. Biden pretended to pull out his own personal money, and start throwing around free cash like Oprah Winfrey. I don’t think that anyone, Democrat or Republican, thinks that this is legal. Imagine if President Trump had announced that he was going to give every American $500 so they could buy a gun. That would have gotten shut down quickly. As it should have. It’s blatantly unconstitutional.
I also don’t think that Mr. Biden cares if any college graduates actually get any money. I suspect that he hopes that, right before mid-terms, Republicans across the country publicly try to take money away from hard-working students of color. I even suspect that his lawyers made their rationalization intentionally weak to encourage legal challenges, giving Democrats even more opportunities to make Republicans look mean in public hearings. He sees this as a way to gain seats in the midterms, and nothing more. Otherwise, he would have just proposed a bill to Congress, as Presidents have always done. This is obviously about Congressional elections, not college loans.
Or perhaps I’m being too cynical.
But over the past couple years, that seems impossible…
Published in General
My wife went back to retool and get her BA and MBA in the last few years. Most of the college professors were telling their students to take out as much money as possible for school that it was all going to be forgiven. She was told this by multiple professors / administrators. I have met a few of her fellow students that say the same. This has been the message for the last 5 years or so that we know about. Make not mistake. The debts are going to be forgiven and free college education is coming.
I saw somewhere a legit question: What if the parents foot the bill for college? Is that paid off too or is this strictly government student loans? That’s like the government paying itself back. What about private bank loans?
My understanding is that this only applies to government student loans. I have some friends that have had student loans way too long that are upset that this will not help them because their loans are outside the government system backed by some sort of third party with the government being the guarantee.
If you don’t make your car payments, they take back the car. If you stop making your mortgage payments, they take back your house.
Can we at least require that any student who accepts loan forgiveness has to give back his degree? I mean I know it’s probably not worth anything anyway, but at least it’s something.
Now THAT is an interesting idea! Hmmm…
During the monologue on Breitbart news daily, Alex really did a good job on this. As long as you’re not borrowing for hookers and cocaine, there usually isn’t that much difference between types of debt. Drawing the line, or isolating certain types is mostly arbitrary.
He’s got my vote!
Only in the fevered and deranged minds of Kristol, French, Boot, Goldberg, ………….
The Entitled Class of Grifters deemed President Trump dangerous to their livelihood and chose selfishly, and poorly.
This is so very Joe Biden. He would dearly love to forgive all student loans and presumably buy an entire voter demographic. His entire concept of politics is buying constituencies and harming opponents.
Non-senile grownups told him that there was no way the country could afford such a policy so he petulantly crafted an utterly pointless substitute that is too small to change the burden for the heavily indebted but will still knock a hole in the federal budget. It will be yet another “win” for Joe Biden!
The midterms are just a couple months away. The people who are interested in following our constitution and running government legally should just wait until the second week of November to file suit. The first thought that came to my mind after hearing about this…where the hell does Biden get the authority to do this? I was speaking with a friend last night. He pointed out that this relief of loan payment will be taxable income. I hope these young folks realize this and save enough To pay their taxes. The penalties and interest from the new army of armed IRS agents could be much more painful than simply paying off their legal debts, like so many other honest young people have done in the past.
This idea is not even remotely constitutional. These are private entities with property rights. Their endowments represent gifts from alumni and others. Their status as charitable not-for-profits could be changed, or at least limited, though that may seem awfully spiteful. Most institutions are state universities and colleges, and are subject to local government control. State legislation could be used to curb restrictions on free speech and to encourage an understanding of civics. Every student who graduates should be able to pass a test on basic civics. Measurements of the success of alumni overall and from various disciplines could be published and used in an assessment of the college’s mission and funding. Graduation time and rates should also be used to determine whether or not a university or a specific program should be funded and continued. This information should be publically available by discipline. No program should be advanced purely on political justification.
Fair enough, but they need to have every single government sourced advantage taken away from them.
Unfortunately, a bachelor’s has become as much a necessity in our knowledge-based society as a high school diploma used to be. In and of itself, it doesn’t mean a person knows anything, but it implies certain characteristics about a job candidate that employers or graduate or professional education programs want to see. In Massachusetts, firefighters and law enforcement officers now have to have a bachelor’s before they start professional training.
One of my heroes is Scott Walker. The former governor of Wisconsin realized that people without a college degree of some sort could not get past the computer screening all employers and other institutions were using. So he mandated that all Wisconsin state colleges and universities go through their student records and issue an associate’s degree for anyone they could qualify to do so. Then he asked them to go through those records again and see how many students who had dropped out they could nudge to finish some small thing to end up with a degree of some kind without too much additional expense. He helped thousands of people in his state with these steps.
Florida and Texas, in recognition of the same problem, found ways to offer the $10,000 bachelor’s degree. That said, I’m seeing search results saying it never materialized, which if true is a shame.
The community college movement was fantastic for helping people fix their credentials. I once ran into a group of big burly fishermen in the waiting room to the “Women in Transition” program. :-) The feds had shut down one of the Georges Bank fishing areas, putting a lot of fifty-year-old fishing boat captains out of work suddenly. :-)
The Harvard Extension Program is an achievement for helping the uncredentialed earn credentials for the job market too. As is Northeastern University. As is another of my favorite programs, the University without Walls run by UMass Amherst.
There are a lot of options available for people to fill in the education gaps. And I’m glad there is financing help available for them.
What we really need to do is separate in our minds for ourselves and for our kids job-related education loans from liberal arts education loans. In an ideal world, people would be learning from the Great Books throughout their lives–they should always be “in school.” I have long admired the lyceum movement in the 1850s, which is probably one of the oldest lifelong learning opportunities that have been created over time. And, of course, churches have always sponsored liberal arts education of sorts. And our free libraries. Those are all pay-as-you-go education opportunities. No loans needed.
#45 is dead-on
I didn’t know this. Good job, Governor!
The problem with “National Debt” (which this loan forgiveness program will absolutely add to) is that no one ever sees the payment book. That is, we pay taxes, have withholding, prices go up, but there is no accounting that indicates “this dollar withheld from my paycheck is being used to cover student loan forgiveness” and “this dollar withheld pays for an illegal immigrants free phone” etc etc.
We know they get “free” stuff, and that the bills accumulate, the National Debt goes up, but we personally never see the money coming from our own pocket. It is insidious.
This in particular is a feature for growing big government. We all know this is illegal, morally wrong, fiscally bankrupt; but it doesn’t feel like it directly affects “me”. So all the lefties and libs, and those who don’t really think about it, feel pretty happy with giving away more “free stuff”. They might even get some themselves, and can feel morally superior thinking they are helping others less fortunate.
You will never convince them otherwise.
People get tired of me saying this, but this is what happens with discretionary central banking and inflationism. It is impossible to control spending in this regime. Unfortunately, we are at least 20 years past the point of no return.
Every second of inflation creates misallocated capital and unnecessary growth of government. It’s 1000% unjustifiable, but it’s just way too late to do anything about it. The only way to West is going to hold together is they have to try to have 5% inflation with no mistakes for about five years.
Central planning is worthless.
The last 14 months have been -3.8% wage growth.
It will even out 15 years from now.
Never misunderestimate the capacity of a Progressive (particularly of the Joe Biden variety) to screw things up.
You mean after 15 years it will have reached -100%?
Listen to Hugh Hewitt on special report last night. The part at 6:20.
Unconstitutional.
Largest decision ever made in the history of government, $300,000,000,000 to $800,000,000,000 per Wharton Business School. How does that turn out positive? It’s just pushing too much money and too many things around.
https://www.foxnews.com/shows/special-report
I was being sarcastic about the “logic” of inflationists.
Or issue or guarantee them in the first place.
I think on Hugh Hewitt this morning, he said that the number one statistical area is Washington DC.
The stupid system is set up to not add value but decrease it. If we didn’t have so much better rule of law compared to other countries we wouldn’t have jack. You don’t even defend our easy to defend border, anymore.
The always foolish left thought it would be a good idea to go after those Republicans who got PPP loans. The Ricochet podcast zoom this morning had a great point which I repeated on Twitter to those spreading the leftie attack.
You didn’t understand their vague wording because they couldn’t come out and say they were fulfilling their promise to pay “reparations” by admitting people to overpriced universities where they could either drop out or get worthless degrees and leave with high debt. Then they could be told their debt was excused so they just got their $20,000 reparations.
That’s actually a good question – if instead of reducing outstanding loan balances by $10,000, the government sent each beneficiary a check for $10k, how many of the recipients would put the money towards their student loans instead of spending it on something else?
Why Unconstitutional? What’s the provision that would make a Congressionally-approved tax on endowments illegal?