President Joe Biden is getting ready to launch another attempt to reduce student loan debt for millions of Americans.
And no matter what high-minded reasons the administration gives for the plan, the reality is that it’s just another attempt by the Democrats to buy votes from Americans with their own money.
According to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, Biden will outline the plan during a speech in Madison, Wisconsin — a strong indication that his goal is not debt relief so much as re-election.
Wisconsin is one of the most contested of the swing states, going to former President Donald Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020, each time by fewer than 25,000 votes.
Wins by Republican candidates and causes in the state in Tuesday’s elections must certainly have given Team Biden reason for concern.
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The Journal pointed at previous polling that showed Biden not only “trailing in six of the seven most important battlegrounds of the 2024 election,” but also leading Trump by only 10 points among voters under 30, compared to the 25 points Biden beat Trump by in 2020 among this age group.
So what better way to win some of those voters back than by bribing them with their own money?
The details of Biden’s new proposal aren’t available yet, but the fact that he’s making a second attempt to waive billions in student debt should come as no surprise, as he promised to do just that “[j]ust hours after the Supreme Court in June 2023 killed his first student loan forgiveness plan,” the Journal reported.
The Biden team would like to begin “canceling waves of student debt” between now and the November election, the outlet noted, looking for a “political boost” for the struggling incumbent.
Would you be happy with your tax dollars paying others’ student loan debts?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 100% (18 Votes)
A White House spokesman declined to comment for the Journal’s piece, and honestly, who could blame him? I mean, what could he say to put lipstick on this pig?
Unfortunately for Biden, there are significant obstacles in the way of his waiving student debt to buy votes. For one thing, the process he’s chosen to undertake this time — after the SCOTUS rebuke — is much more time-consuming.
“The Higher Education Act requires that the Education Department conduct a so-called negotiated rule-making to develop the regulations, an unusual and slow process that isn’t required for most other regulations,” the Journal reported.
“Some in the administration feared the rules would get caught up in the government’s bureaucracy for months, making it unlikely that borrowers would see any relief before the election,” it added.
The administration has already held public meetings with stakeholders, however, one step required in the process. However, after that, the proposed new regulation must be submitted for public comments (not that the administration is likely to care what those comments say).
After that, however, the regulation will almost certainly be challenged in court — probably by Republicans who recognize the cynical vote-buying scheme for what it is, and possibly also by taxpayers who object to their money being used to pay for easily avoidable mistakes made by other people (or their representatives).
How long it may take for those lawsuits to wind their way through the court systems is impossible to predict. But given that the election is now only seven months away and the public comment period for this new “negotiated rule-making” hasn’t even opened yet, it seems fairly likely that no actual debt relief for Biden’s intended target audience of voters is likely to be seen this year.
So what the Biden administration intends as an attempt to win back young voters may very well simply end up as one more example of this 81-year-old president’s inability to accomplish his goals — even on the second attempt.
