Posted on 06/14/2023 9:33:05 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The NAACP is “disappointed’ that the Biden Administration is ending the pause on student loan repayments. Isn’t that just too bad?
“The resolution of the debt ceiling crisis is one we wholeheartedly welcomed and we appreciate all that went into debt ceiling negotiations. However, we are disappointed that the needs of Black communities have suffered from the negotiated agreement that will erode economic progress for Black Americans,” Wisdom Cole, the NAACP’s national director of youth and college, and Derrick Johnson, the group’s president, say in the letter.
“It is disappointing that narrowing the racial wealth gap was not given a higher priority,” Cole and Johnson say, adding that Black borrowers were 50% more likely to have their loans fall into default. NBC News saw an advance copy of the letter Tuesday.
To Messrs. Cole and Johnson, I would first say this: Even if we take your statement at face value, where, in the Constitution, is it an enumerated power of the Federal Government to address racial wealth gaps, in student loans or anywhere else? I would then ask them to read the Tenth Amendment. But that’s a futile exercise, as the Federal Government has been ignoring the concept of enumerated powers and the Tenth Amendment for quite a while now.
The fact is, the Biden Administration has been showing favoritism to different classes of student loan debtors for some time. Last year, they quietly forgave student loans for federal employees (and no one else) and have extended the pause on student loan payments well past the initial reason for doing so, that being the COVID “crisis.” But the NAACP has more demands:
Should the Supreme Court fail to uphold student debt relief, Black America demands that your Administration pursue all legal pathways to make a permanent solution that respects the contributions of student loan borrowers, makes higher education more accessible and affordable and ends the cycle of pushing Black borrowers into poverty as they seek to share in the opportunities afforded by this nation.
I’m not sure what Black America is. I thought there was only one America, as someone once famously said. But we can deal with the NAACP’s divisive language another time.
If one wants to make higher education more affordable, the best way to do it is to get the Federal Government out of the business of financing education, in any way. This federal dump of billions into higher education has inflated costs; the lack of accountability for those dollars has given rise to a myriad of “X-Studies” degrees, most of which are of no more value than a degree in Underwater Dog-Polishing. Remove said federal funding, place student loans where they once were, in the private sector, and such nonsense would disappear very quickly. It is, after all, the primary purpose of education to produce young people with marketable skills, and in this, the education establishment has been failing for some time.
This is, of course, one more chapter in a much larger story. The Supreme Court is set to rule on that larger issue, and in so doing may slam the brakes on this unilateral action which the Executive Branch simply has no authority to take. The NAACP’s demands aside, the president has no legal pathway for any such solution. Any blanket forgiveness action would, to put it bluntly, abrogate centuries of contract law. These students signed contracts, the action was theirs, the responsibilities are theirs, the consequences are theirs, and there’s an end of it.
And that brings us to the moral issue involved, and it’s one I’m not seeing discussed in the White House or the halls of Congress. That moral issue is simply the abdication of personal responsibility that this “forgiveness” entails. Any student loan forgiveness plan, no matter how limited or unlimited, eventually falls on the taxpayers. Money has been disbursed, and the institutions that disbursed that money, one way or another, must be made whole. If the students — who, I remind you, signed contracts — are “forgiven” their debt, then the taxpayers are on the hook.
In other words, I, as a taxpayer, will be made responsible for the debts of a student, who signed a contract, who accepted responsibility, and who has evaded that responsibility. Maybe they made poor choices, as in pursuing an “X-Studies” degree that prepares them for no career imaginable. Maybe their expectations are unrealistic, and they aren’t considering entry-level jobs. Maybe their academic performance was poor, and their transcript is limiting their options.
But they, not the taxpayers, signed contracts. They, not the taxpayers, are responsible for their own debts. They, not the taxpayers, are responsible for the consequences of their decisions. They, not the taxpayers, need to pony up and pay their own damn loans.
Throughout my six decades-plus of life, I’ve always paid my own debts. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect others to do likewise.
The dirty little secret of the Student Loan program is that under Obama, Student Loans were treated like back door reparations. Obama loosened the regulations of student loans and allowed loans to be given to bogus, fly by night “schools” such as beauty schools teaching things like hair weaves and hair extensions. Many loans were completely fraudulent with the “school” and students splitting the cash and using the money for living expenses with no school attendance or intention of ever paying the loan back. The Democrats want to forgive these fraudulent loans so the problem of default of these loans will not cause the fraud to be exposed.
I paid for my daughter to get her BS. I worked nights and double shifts to do so. She paid for her masters
I ran up some student debt while going to college. Half of my student loan debt was from one semester at Pepperdine. I realized early on that I couldn’t afford to stay at Pepperdine so I transferred to a Cal State school. There was high unemployment in the college town I lived in so I racked up some student debt to survive. After graduation, I didn’t take fancy trips to Europe, buy luxury cars nor buy a McMansion because I paid back my student loans. After several years, I paid the damn loans off. I didn’t need the government to help me. People who ask for student debt relief piss me off to no end.
Pay your bills like the rest of us you deadbeat, freeloading bass turds. The taxpayers didn’t force you deadbeat morons to go to college. That was your decision.
Then reinstate every PPP loan forgiven after Covid. Once those deadbeats start forking over repayments, then worry about student loans. Screw the PPP loan freeloaders.
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