‘Voucher’ justification may allow Biden to forgive $50,000 loans

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist

Last week, President-elect Joe Biden questioned whether he had the authority to forgive the first $50,000 in school loans per debtor upon his inauguration in January. He noted that Congress had already specified that the limit would be $10,000 in relief. However, also last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order allowing states to use block grant monies for private school tuition, a position that has been supported in previous pieces of legislation.

Democrats condemned the move, yet in Trump’s presumption, he has provided Biden with a political – as well as legal – justification to act on the larger amnesty package. If one assumes, as many Republicans do, that public money should follow the child to whatever school best suits that student – public, private or parochial – then the GOP would have a difficult task in arguing against the progressive push to convince President-elect Biden to forgive the first $50,000 in school loans. It is a logical extension of the same extraordinary use of executive authority that Trump himself employed.

Moreover, it has become an economic given in our society that a young person cannot achieve employment without post-secondary education – either a four-year university degree or a community and technical college certificate. In most states, $50,000 is the cost of tuition at a four-year school, or the cost of tuition for a two-year associate’s degree along with room and board included.

The nice thing about a flat $50,000 amnesty is that these funds could be spent anywhere – like a school voucher. Should a university’s tuition cost more than that amount, it’s the choice of a student (or his parents) to attend that private university and make up the difference themselves. Yet it also amounts to enough to cover the basic bachelor’s degree program at a public college. The executive order which President-elect Biden prospectively would sign is nothing less than a school voucher for higher education, just framed through the school loan program. In doing so, Biden would open up the bounds of educational choice for those over the age of 18. He would be using Trump’s very words Defending school vouchers as one of his last moves in the White House to the advantage of those indebted.

In Louisiana, with the TOPS program (which already acts as a school voucher for Higher Ed), adding an additional $50,000 would cover the room and board for students for four years. At the very least, it would provide the economic flexibility for a parent (who cannot qualify for TOPS) to go back to school.

The forgiveness element of the PPP loan shows that the federal government has proven willing to write-off individual private sector loans for economic purposes previously, and the G.I. Bill long ago established that education could be assumed as a responsibility of the federal government to provide jobs of those entering the workforce. Lastly, President Trump used executive power in August to unilaterally defer college loan payments until December 31, without congressional legislation, so it was a Republican president who provided the constitutional justification for this use of executive power. It would be a strange GOP that condemns Biden for acting exactly as Trump did, albeit on a grander scale. (In fact, the use of government resources for purposes for which they were not appropriated is also a Trump precedent. The construction of the wall came from diverted federal funds under the president’s emergency powers.)

Graduates of the universities and community colleges pay far more in increased tax revenues over a lifetime than the amount proposed to be forgiven. Moreover, those who have their loans forgiven will be able to take out new loans to go back to school sooner. Currently, it’s very difficult to get a school loan until the current balance is paid, and thousands of students are shackled in debt and dead-end jobs due to student loans obtained for degree programs never completed. More than 40 percent of U.S. adults who attended college – about 30 percent of all U.S. adults – had at least some student debt last year, according to a survey released in May by the Federal Reserve. Nearly 30 percent of those who have student loans also deferred their payments in 2019.

Since such a concept would probably increase the number of people attending post-secondary education, the Republican complaint that Biden would give away billions to the rich falls flat. Moreover, the TOPS program, like most voucher programs, makes no discernment whether you are rich or poor, and that’s the way an “entitlement” – literally defined “a human right” – like education should be. The federal government already mitigates student loans in a limited fashion. Debts are forgiven after 25 years of consistent payment, or 10 years if one works in the public sector. Forgiveness of the first $50,000 would serve as merely another element in our mitigation system, and would disproportionately benefit the poorest people in our society most – given that the average student loan debt amounts to about $28,000 per person.

So far, the president-elect has only pledged to forgive $10,000 per person, and only as part of a larger legislative package, but taking the next step up to $50,000 by executive order (as progressives recommend) would strangely be the most centrist thing Biden could do whilst in office. It would empower people – regardless of income or background – to get an education, and earn a better living in our society through the strength of their own efforts, the most conservative of ideals!

This article originally published in the January 4, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.