OPINION:
Faith in our government institutions has declined in recent years to the lowest levels in history, and it’s not hard to understand why.
White House and Department of Education lawyers knew the odds were long they’d get the Supreme Court to uphold President Biden’s student loan bailout scheme, yet they deliberately misrepresented their chance of success.
By the millions, Americans refused to look critically at the law and fell for one of the biggest lies in American political history. Sure, then-President Barack Obama’s claims, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” still takes the cake, but Mr. Biden’s deception about student loan forgiveness isn’t far behind.
The Affordable Care Act lies affected the health care and finances of virtually every American. Similarly, the White House’s continued use of the pandemic to justify student loan forbearance and providing false hope to tens of millions of borrowers has made the education debt crisis even worse.
Student loan borrowers, particularly younger voters, should be reminded that they were intentionally duped by Democrats who pushed this pipe dream in 2020 and 2022 to boost their numbers at the polls. Now, they are trying to do it again for 2024 with the White House’s “plan B,” which may have even less of a chance for success.
Republican candidates should hammer the message that loan payoffs were so transparently illegal, because both Mr. Biden and Rep. Nancy Pelosi have said as much during their combined near-century in Washington.
People who thought that Mr. Biden was going to pay off their loans got played like a fiddle. The White House bet that low-information voters wouldn’t understand checks and balances or appreciate the administration’s losing record in the courts over its blatant abuses of power.
The higher education establishment isn’t providing the economic ladder it once did. The reasons are simple market principles. Most Americans are still catching up to the reality.
Fifty years ago, a college degree was a badge of honor. It was a sign of academic achievement and gave job-seekers a status that had real value. As standards dipped and college attendance grew, the value of the degree declined.
All the while, faculty unions and administrators drove up costs 800% for four-year degrees, all for providing a service that yielded less value to the customer.
No industry that has raised costs like the higher education racket has gotten away with it.
More than 40 million Americans owe a total of more than $1.6 trillion in student debt. Student debt was higher in 2021 than credit card debt and car loans combined. Most of this debt is associated with federal student loans rather than private loans.
Not surprisingly, those who never stopped paying their loans or resumed paying as soon as they were able during the pandemic are today better off than those who were conned by the Biden White House with promises of free stuff.
They didn’t need to do this to people, but the leftists who run Mr. Biden’s teleprompter couldn’t resist.
While they were trumpeting supposedly record job creation numbers, they kept extending emergency loan forbearance while telling tens of millions of borrowers that their debt will just vanish.
Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, who never told people to stop smoking, or to exercise, diet, and get checked for heart disease during the pandemic, Mr. Biden never encouraged people to restart paying their loans.
Let’s be fair here. Student loan forbearance began in March 2020 and was extended twice during the Trump administration, despite the lockdowns being largely over. But temporary forbearance became a political maneuver during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Once in the White House, however, Democrats saw their opportunity to turn forbearance into forgiveness.
This train wreck has been happening in slow motion for years. Mr. Obama’s student loan takeover bought off voters with increased forbearance programs that ended up ballooning student debt more than $600 billion during his time in office.
Democrats helped make the problem worse so they could then lay claim to a solution. Stress millions of Americans financially, then tell them the government will rush in in with other people’s money to solve the problem.
Face facts, millennials, Generation Zers and some of you Gen Xers out there: For all your supposed education, you got duped again by the left.
Now the ball is in your court. Make Democrats pay for manipulating you at the expense of your future. Government can’t solve its own debt crisis, and it won’t solve yours.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and the author of “Tough Sell: Fighting the Media War in Iraq.” He served as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.
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