I don’t have a lot to add to the chorus of outrage that Charlie Cooke hasn’t already led, passionately and eloquently, about President Biden’s unilateral, constitutionally and legally dubious decision to have the U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab on $10,000 of student loan debt for anyone making less than $125,000 per year.
But I’ll just note that rarely do you see a president make a decision that is so at odds with his own self-image.
Joe Biden can be an insufferable blowhard, full of long-winded and self-aggrandizing stories, meandering anecdotes that rarely seem all that relevant to the topic at hand, and implausible boasts. (Sure, sure, of course Biden and his father saw two men making out in the middle of the street in 1950s Wilmington, Delaware and his father expressed unreserved support for their love. That sounds plausible! Irish Catholic men born in the nineteen-teens were famously accepting of public displays of homosexuality.) Considering how frequently Biden cites things his father taught him, you would think he was raised by Aesop.
But Biden’s nostalgic stories of allegedly Mayberry-esque Scranton and the life lessons ascribed by his father appealed to audiences for a reason. They aligned with the lessons lots of Americans’ parents taught them: Tell the truth, even when it’s difficult. Put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. Be responsible, keep your word, and pay what you owe. Don’t expect someone else to come along and clean up a mess you made. Hold yourself accountable.
And then, nearly eight decades later, Biden decides that the U.S. taxpayer should pay back loans that other people have failed to pay back. In 1950s Scranton, this decision would be seen as punishing the virtuous and diligent and rewarding the reckless and irresponsible.
It is easy to imagine a scenario where, if a Republican had proposed a move like this, Biden would denounce the decision as a taxpayer bailout of greedy universities. Biden voted for the TARP bailouts back in autumn of 2008, but once he was vice president, he wasn’t above denouncing the response to the financial crisis, calling it “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.”
Why is Biden going ahead with this? Because the demographics most likely to complain about student loans include a lot of progressive Democrats, and Biden needs them to be fired up about the midterms. Biden’s willing to exacerbate inflation and endanger the country’s economy, just in hopes of generating a slight improvement in Democratic turnout in a few months. The old folks of Scranton would be appalled.