The Morning Rant: Conservative Counter-Actions Are Needed To The Perpetual Student Debt Repayment Moratoriums

It’s starting to appear that student loan debt is being permanently forgiven through an ongoing succession of repayment moratoriums.

Somehow, what is never discussed is new student loan debt. Does our ruling class intend for colleges to keep pushing new loans, for which repayment is immediately suspended?

In March 2020 the Department of Education paused debt repayment due to the initial Covid panic, while also setting interest rates at 0%. When Joe Biden became President, he immediately extended the moratorium until September 2021, which he then extended until Feb 2022. He is now extending the deadline until May 2022. We should expect more extensions.

White House extends federal student loan repayment pause after heavy progressive criticism

All of these repayment pauses were done without any Congressional action, of course, since our lawmakers are no longer actively engaged in creating or enforcing the rules that govern our lives.

Joe Biden famously ran for president with the promise to waive student loan debt…

…but so far, he is apparently reluctant to fully pull the trigger. Doing so would anger those who did pay off their loans, as well as angering working class wage earners who aren’t keen on a transfer of wealth from themselves to those who took on the debt when they went to college.

The Democrats’ base, of course, is fully on board with total cancellation of student debt.

Our ruling class has become addicted to the permanent “emergency” measures that they have appropriated due to Covid, therefore they are not keen to let it end. And so long as our rulers are exercising emergency pandemic-era powers, student loan debt will also be deferred into eternity. Because there’s an “emergency.”

In other words, whether or not it is ultimately forgiven, we are not likely to see a resumption of student loan repayment in the near future, if ever.

Republicans are going to take control of Congress in 11 months, and we have an excellent chance of replacing Joe Biden with a conservative President in 2024. An overhaul of the student loan program is going to have to happen, so let’s do it on our terms. Some ideas would include:

• No new student loans may be issued at any time there is a repayment moratorium.
• Colleges must guaranty all student loans from which they receive tuition payments.
• Predatory lending laws should create criminal penalties for any financial aid officer who saddles a student with more debt than he can realistically repay. (I know that our libertarian readers would hate this, but real banks have to deal with these types of laws, so why should a financial aid officer at a university be exempt from exploiting a naïve 18-year old who has no hope of repaying a $200,000 loan for a degree in Grievance Studies?)
• Student debt recipients must work part-time (perhaps 15 hours per week) during college and maintain employment as a condition of receiving a student loan. (In other words: “No skin in the game? Then no loan.”)
• If the day comes that student debt is actually forgiven, conservatives must go scorched earth and pass legislation to permanently eliminate all future student debt programs. In fact, if President Biden can eliminate all student debt with just an executive order, then President DeSantis can eliminate the entire student loan racket with just an executive order.

But wouldn’t this hurt the university system? We can hope. In a best-case scenario, it would be the end of the university system as we currently know it. The country would be better off if a new system of higher education were to emerge, because the existing college cartel has become terribly destructive to this country. We have an opportunity now to starve the beast.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:15 AM

| Access Comments