The Chronicle Review this week features a food fight between a critic of federally guaranteed student loans (Representative Thomas Petri of Wisconsin) and a defender of the program (Kevin Bruns of America’s Student Loan Providers). For subscribers, Petri’s article is here and Bruns’ counterattack is here.

Who is right? To me, it doesn’t matter. The federal government has no constitutional authority either to guarantee private loans or to directly lend money to students. The idea that Washington should be involved in subsidizing college students is one of those bad decisions made decades ago that we should be trying to get out of — like Social Security and Medicare.

The Founders were right in their understanding that if the powers of the government weren’t kept to strictly limited functions that excluded the possibility of legislation that taxes everyone to provide benefits to a few, the result would be endless political strife and great waste of resources.