Tom Nichols on why loan forgiveness is politically risky
Although today’s big news from the White House is about student-loan forgiveness, we should note that it is Ukrainian Independence Day, which usually passes unnoticed outside of Ukraine. Today also marks six months into Russia’s attempt to extinguish Ukraine and its democratic government, so it is a day that should have special meaning for everyone who lives in a democracy.
But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
President Joe Biden has finally announced his program for alleviating the burden of student debt. Biden and his party have been on a winning streak for most of the summer: With a 50–50 Senate, they have managed to notch a string of legislative wins while gas prices have plunged, inflation has cooled, unemployment has remained low, and a dreaded summer COVID-19 meltdown has failed to materialize. And how will the Democrats spend this political capital? By celebrating a niche policy that will hand the Republicans a free issue in America’s ongoing culture and class wars, just as Biden and the Democrats head into the 2022 and 2024 elections.
It could have been worse. Some Democrats were pressing the president to write off $50,000 of debt, an idea that I said more than a year ago would have been a political disaster. The current plan, by comparison, is merely bad and politically obtuse.
The argument for loan forgiveness is not only that it is the right thing to do—I’ll come back to this—but that young, college-educated people are an important pillar of the Democratic Party’s base. It sounds moral and caring, at least within the bubble of a highly educated party, to advocate for relieving some of the cost of higher education. After all, everyone has to go to college, right? It’s practically a life requirement now. And kids don’t know what they’re signing up for when they take on boatloads of student debt—they’re only teenagers!
The truth, however, is that most people don’t go to college, and the majority of those who do go manage to get out without life-destroying debt. Fewer than four in ten Americans over 25 have a four-year college degree. Only 13 percent have federal student debt, and the average undergraduate leaves college with an obligation about the size of a moderate car loan. (Graduate school is where the numbers really climb.)
Worse, this policy is aimed at the young and college-educated, a group that is, in the main, composed of reliable Democratic Party voters—and who should by now be plenty motivated by the ongoing threat to democracy from the Republican Party.
