OPINION:
President Biden is remarkably like the character Michael Scott from the sitcom “The Office,” and not because of Mr. Biden’s mental performance or that he’s from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
With the Supreme Court ruling that Mr. Biden’s student loan bailout is unconstitutional, he is practically living out an episode of “The Office” in which Michael Scott promises to pay for children’s college education — and then reneges.
Like many Democrats in 2020, Mr. Biden campaigned on “forgiving” student loan debt, a euphemism for a taxpayer-funded bailout. This certainly helped garner votes in the general election. The first pseudo-forgiveness by Mr. Biden was unnecessarily extending the student loan repayment moratorium that was put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under that moratorium, which still exists, borrowers have no payments due, and no interest is accruing. All accounts have been placed in good standing, including those previously in default. While the payment pause is in place, it functions like forgiveness and is costing taxpayers more than $5 billion a month in interest alone.
Mr. Biden’s more permanent solution was a misuse of the HEROES Act from 2003, which the administration manipulated to provide a bailout of up to $40,000 to households earning up to $250,000 annually. Fortunately, the Supreme Court recognized that this was a gross overreach of executive authority, and that option is now off the table.
Not to be deterred, Mr. Biden is trying even more schemes to get this political football across the goal line.
First up is the Higher Education Act of 1965, which allegedly grants the secretary of education the power to waive federal student loans. But taking this avenue means a slower process that includes public comments on the proposed regulation, with lawsuits likely to follow.
That’s why Mr. Biden has also announced a deceptively named “on-ramp” program.
Congress this year took away Mr. Biden’s statutory authority to further extend the repayment moratorium, meaning interest begins accruing Sept. 1 and payments are due the following month. His on-ramp program short-circuits this by preventing accounts from entering default for another year after payments are supposed to begin.
This effectively adds another year of pseudo-forgiveness to Mr. Biden’s term, meaning that many borrowers will make not a single student loan payment while Mr. Biden is in office, and they still won’t be in default. That’s a key political consideration for a sizable voting bloc.
If millions of borrowers who were promised loan “forgiveness” by Mr. Biden suddenly find themselves having to pay their debt, Election Day will be reminiscent of the famous scene from “The Office” where Michael Scott confesses that he can’t make good on his guarantee.
Everyone’s disappointment in that scene is palpable.
The political corollary is voters staying home, or worse, voting for the other party.
Leaving nothing to chance, Mr. Biden is also attempting forgiveness by restructuring repayment plans. Under his proposed changes, most borrowers will have the option to select monthly payments as low as $0 and still keep their accounts in good standing.
Millions of borrowers will be able to do this for years until their loan balances are ultimately “forgiven,” having paid nothing for their education.
Whatever the method, Mr. Biden’s student loan amnesty schemes all create a severe moral hazard, give incentive to risky behavior by protecting borrowers against possible downsides. The average student will borrow thousands of dollars more in anticipation of further forgiveness.
Colleges act similarly when students have access to more loans. Smelling blood in the water, schools raise the cost of attendance by about 60% of the added funding students receive. Mr. Biden’s machinations will only increase borrowing and indebtedness for young people while schools become even more unaffordable — which means more borrowing — as the bill for the taxpayer spirals upward.
Both Mr. Biden and Michael Scott broke their promises to fund people’s college educations, but at least Michael Scott promised to use his own money. Mr. Biden is hellbent on using ours.
• E.J. Antoni is a public finance economist at The Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at Committee to Unleash Prosperity.
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