Why You’re Wrong About Biden’s Student Debt Executive Order

The problem won’t be solved by putting American politicians in a Lose/Lose situation…

President Biden’s decision to forgive student loan debt of up to $10,000 (or, for those without Pell Grants, $20,000) for college borrowers earning less than $125,000 annually has made waves, both positive and negative.

Many Americans feel it’s an important step in the right direction; several others applaud the spirit behind it, but believe it doesn’t nearly go far enough. And yet others view it as a political ploy to buy the affection of college-educated voters ahead of the midterms. This third group classifies it as patently unfair to those who’ve already paid off their student loans in full.

Let me just start off by saying I’m not a fan of Joe Biden, especially when it comes to his personality and his worldview. However, when his actions are beneficial, I’m still going to give him due credit.

Additionally, I just finished paying off my own student loans last year. They totaled upwards of $20,000 when I first took them out. Upon completion of paying them off, they’d ballooned to nearly $30,000 over the course of thirteen years (due to accrued interest via the Income-Based Repayment plan).

That means, individually, I won’t be helped one iota by Biden’s Executive Order.

But this isn’t about me or my bank account. It’s about what will move forward our economy and our national morale.

In her Medium piece entitled “I Understand the Student Loan Frustration of Both Sides,” Heidy De La Cruz acknowledges that Biden’s action is only a “temporary band-aid” that needs a better long-term solution. Furthermore, as pointed out by Alfie Jane, this loan forgiveness could be subject to state-level income taxes depending on where the forgiven borrower resides.

Regardless, Ms. De La Cruz spotlights the inherent selfishness of so many of these critics. As she puts it, “It’s like being grateful that you don’t need welfare, but [resenting how] the help is available for those who do need it.”

In that same vein, Laura Halls writes:

If we found a 100% cure for lung cancer tomorrow, you wouldn’t say we shouldn’t release it because it would be unfair to those who have already died of cancer.

Or, if I was going to turn myself into such a selfish narrator…

It would be like me claiming how since I suffered from bullying due to being gay and gender-nonconforming in K-12 school, I should demand that present-day LGBT+ kids be harassed. As an exercise in resilience, apparently.

Or…

When I was in school, I dealt with an authority figure who was a likely pedophile. Therefore, as an adult, I ought to insist that all young people need the “character-building” experience of being subjected to their very own pedophiles.

How ridiculous does that sound?

Later, Ms. Halls provides another window into the mentalities of those who’ve been criticizing Biden’s actions. She challenges left-wingers who are accusing right-wingers of hypocrisy. Instead, her diagnosis is that it’s selective outrage on the part of many conservatives:

What I’ve seen many [liberal-minded] people do in the last few days is they point to right-wingers having their PPP loans forgiven in contrast with their stance on student loan forgiveness as though it is some sort of hypocrisy, but this is not the case. Right-wingers don’t care about loan forgiveness, as we’ve seen [from those of them who accepted federal pandemic relief]. They only have a problem with it being implemented to support the [“]wrong[”] people.

Specifically, they have a problem with poor people not being enslaved to their debtors, especially people of color, as those are the most affected by student loans. Again, it’s not really about a moral crusade against people being lazy or anything of that sort. It’s about keeping poor people down and ensuring they don’t have access to higher education. In other words, it’s about preserving specific social hierarchies.

These authors have all identified various plausible motives of Biden’s critics. Meanwhile, other voices recognize the bitterness and vitriol across generational divides.

Lauren Elizabeth calls out Baby Boomers who claim Biden’s decision enables people to retain financially-irresponsible habits; yet, they’re the ones who always squawk about how “Life isn’t fair!” when lecturing Xers, Millennials, Zoomers, and Alphas.

They practice what I refer to as “The ‘Bootstraps’ Fallacy” after having accumulated their own wealth and prosperity under much more stable economic conditions.

In an op-ed entitled “So You Paid For Your Own Damn College Costs,” Michelle Teheux describes people who are uninformed about college debt relief. She echoes Ms. Elizabeth’s point about a pervasive lack of awareness about out-of-control higher education expenses amongst copious members of older generations.

Furthermore, Ms. Teheux pinpoints two other groups. The first is comprised of people who never earned a degree of their own. Since they chose not to — or were unable to — attend college, they have no empathy for the experiences of student borrowers.

A second group, says Ms. Teheux, consists of people ignorant of how predatory these interest rates have become for college loans. This is especially striking when compared to loans for things such as home mortgages.

Harry Seitz chronicles how, since the late-80s and early-90s, college expenses have increased by an estimated 140%. Since then, more and more employers have begun requiring college degrees. The average student loan debt is estimated to be $37,000 per borrower — which means even many of those who are helped by Biden’s Executive Order will still have to pay out thousands of dollars on their existing loans.

Iowan Sharon Falduto slams her state’s junior U.S. Senator, Joni Ernst, for slandering loan holders as “liberal elites.” Factually speaking, most of the borrowers who qualify for Biden’s loan forgiveness opportunities are middle-class or working-class Americans.

Ernst took a page from U.S. Representative Jim Jordan, who flaunted the red herring of “Why should a machinist in Ohio pay for the student loans of a jobless philosophy major in Los Angeles?

Here, Ernst and Jordan are broadly stereotyping student borrowers. They’re leaning into ageism and “bootstrapping” to pander for votes…the same way they’d accuse President Biden of signing his Executive Order to pander to the youth vote.

They are trying to deflect from their party’s attempts at normalizing fascism.

Again, I agree with everyone who says that Biden, Democrats, and Republicans all need to do more to fix the systemic problems with American student loans.

But let me ask you all this question…

What other student debt relief actions could Biden have taken that he didn’t? What should he have done differently through his Executive Orders?

If Biden hadn’t issued any Executive Orders, he would have been accused of being a do-nothing president in terms of helping young people.

If Biden had tried to issue a more comprehensive Executive Order, he would have been accused of shunning “bipartisanship” while those same critics simply told us to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and work multiple jobs to get out of debt.

Or, as Ms. Teheux put it:

President Joe Biden finally did something about student loan debt, and now all the people who were mad at him for not doing anything are mad at him for doing something.

Does Biden even have the power to unilaterally issue an Executive Order that would get to the root of this problem? Can he singlehandedly dictate something comprehensive enough to mitigate high tuition or predatory lending practices themselves?

And even if he could do that, Biden’s critics would then accuse him of being a “dictator” and refusing to work in a bipartisan manner to solve the problem…

…while predictably failing to provide any tangible solutions of their own for the problem (other than broad platitudes such as “Don’t go to college if you can’t afford it” or “Work three jobs and pull yourselves up by your bootstraps”).

Many of you are absolutely right that Congress needs to put forth legislation that would hold moneylenders accountable and promote the hell out of it.

Please show me — which Republicans are specifically doing this?

If you say you care so much about student borrowers, then why don’t you put forth your own plans for helping them get out of debt as quickly and efficiently as possible?

*taps foot*

My five-figure student loans are paid off. Like a shark chomping a chunk out of my bank account. But I have absolutely no animosity toward people who take advantage of this debt relief opportunity. If it helps to alleviate their burden, they’ll reinvest a lot more of their income back into local, state, and federal economies.

Under certain circumstances, I might have done the same.

But you’re getting angry at the wrong people.

This one isn’t on Biden…or Millennials…or Zoomers.

It’s on anybody who doesn’t support widescale structural changes that most people agree are needed.

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