By LaBode Obanor
After several months of deliberation, agonizing, and hesitation, President Joe Biden has finally lived up to one of his campaign promises – canceling a small chunk of the ballooning student loan debts that has weighed on struggling families in America for years.
The plan announced by the White House on Wednesday will erase billions from student loans, and as many as 43 million Americans will benefit.
The relief is set at $10,000 for those earning less than $125,000 per year and $20,000 for Pell grant recipients.
In his remark, the president stated: “All of this means that people can start to climb out from under that mountain of debt…to finally think about buying a home or starting a family or a business. And by the way, when this happens, the whole economy is better off.”
No sooner did he sign the executive order than the criticisms came from all sides.
The democrats veered leftward, criticizing him for not going far enough because they had hoped he would cancel as much as $50,000 or the entire student debts outright, citing debt burden on low-income families.
On the right flank is the Trump party, the Republicans. They screamed foul and the rebuke was loud and swift. They called his action “cynical,” “unconstitutional,” and “a moral hazard.” A few others on middle grounds called it “grossly unfair.”
While I understand the Democrat’ sweeping and the wholesome relief to struggling families due to persisting strain the debts have on people’s finances, it is the republican furor that I don’t get.
These are the same Republicans that cheered Donald Trump when he redistributed wealth by giving trillions of tax cuts to himself and members of his money grabbing class, while taking the poor and middle class to the cleaners.
The bald-faced hypocrisy has taken a new low.
Where was the moral hazard when the wealthy were smiling to the bank with tax bonanza and giveaways while the middle class saw an increase in tax burden?
Where was the unfairness when Trump gave a windfall to the top 1% in America, siphoning the nation’s wealth to a tiny elite while the poor and middle-class wages stagnated after he passed his “Tax Cut and Job Act” of 2017?
The domino effect after he signed his billionaire tax cut saw the wealthiest 400 families in the U.S. pay an average effective tax rate of 23%, while the bottom half of American households paid a rate of 24.2%, according to Economist Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley. How fair is that?
Where was the uproar of unconstitutionality when Donald Trump emptied the national till to benefit big corporations, their top executives, and shareholders by opening loopholes allowing the most insidious accounting gimmicks while at the same time income inequality exacerbated racial wealth divides?
I can go on and on.
No one should take their sudden piety and financial holiness seriously because it is spoiled with imagined injustice.
Notwithstanding the above right-wing’s sanctimony, some genuinely feel that pardoning any student loan is unfair to those who saved up to pay their way through school absent taking a loan or juggling multiple jobs to pay off their debt debts or those that never went to school at all. Well, my response to that is, unfortunately, this is the American system.
The system has never been fair. It has always picked winners and losers and was built on structural and economic inequities. From racial exploitation and occupational segregation of people of color to government-sanctioned mass incarceration and deprivation of life and liberties, even until today. Government policies rarely benefit all equally. Some are advantaged, and some disadvantageous. Ditto to Trump’s tax cut discussed earlier.
Additionally, to argue against relief because you didn’t go to college and didn’t need loans, therefore, no loans should be forgiven, is like saying because you don’t have children of school age or a house; therefore, you shouldn’t have to pay state and local taxes. Such an argument is not only nonsensical but selfish, inconsiderate, and opportunistic.
Just as paying state, local, and property taxes benefits all and in the community, so is loan forgiveness. Plus, it is the right and moral thing to do.
Besides, Joe Biden is not eliminating all debts but a small fraction. Although a good start, he should have done something more consequential, capable of having a more lasting effect. Such as addressing the ever-rising cost of post-secondary education in America. If this were the criticism, then it would be understandable.
Stacking the U.S. against other countries in the developed world, America is an outlier. According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. spends more per student on colleges and universities than virtually any other country in the developed world.
An Average college cost, including tuition, room, and books, hovers around $23,000 to upward of $65,000 yearly. It is not uncommon for a recent graduate from a 4-year college in the U.S. to carry student loan debt in excess of $200,000. This figure is way lopsided and entirely at variance compared to other nations.
The president’s partial student loan forgiveness announced this week is necessary but fails to address the problem adequately. If Joe Biden is serious about correcting the student loan crisis, then he must rein in the gouging that is pervasive in our higher institutions of learning and cap the bloating college costs immediately.
Failure to do this is tantamount to putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
Email: JlaBode74@gmail.com
Twitter: @Obanor
This article is very informative.
The Civil Society should mount pressure on the Biden administration to consider the need for a downward review of the cost of university and college education in the US. The State will benefit from such initiative in the long run.