So the latest in a long series of disastrous moves by the Biden Administration involves forgiving student debt—another attempt to buy votes with public money via gross fiscal mismanagement.
The U.S. Department of Education canceled student loan debt for 40,000 people and seeks to help another 3.6 million pay off their loans. Those who already paid off their contracted loans must feel foolish—much as immigrants who played by the rules and waited in line to come here legally must feel foolish watching the current administration enable thousands of illegals to cross our borders daily.
Part of the reason for student debt involves the high cost of college, something due in part to universities hiking tuition in response to earlier loan programs. Salaries for professors and administrators skyrocketed. Many college presidents make more than the U.S. President.
But college faculty members channel much of their newfound largesse back to their Democratic congressional patrons.
Political contributions are public record. It’s a shameful shell game that’s left students debt-ridden. Now the likes of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are at the forefront of the loan forgiveness movement. So consider that Warren “earned” $429,821 as a part-time instructor at Harvard during 2010-11. Or that Sanders’ wife made many hundreds of thousands of dollars as president of Burlington College before it went bankrupt.
Throwing federal money around has long been a Democrat hallmark. The orgy of public spending over the past two years led to the current inflation mess. It would have been far worse had not Republicans put brakes on some of it. And Democrat Senator Joe Manchin deserves credit as well.
Injecting trillions of dollars of new spending into our economy caused our terrible inflation. It’s as simple as that—although Dems try to blame Vladimir Putin or climate change or whatever for the mess. Yet brainwashed college students still largely support Dems as evidenced by vote totals out of Durham, Hanover, or Keene—as colleges hire ever more directors of “Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice” and the like.
These young people would be better served by learning about economics and the horrible damage that our public debt is doing to their futures. But Warren, Sanders, Joe Biden, and Nancy Pelosi are all around 80 years of age and will be long gone when the spending chickens come home to roost.
Further consider that New Mexico channeled COVID relief funds into tuition grants for illegal immigrants as the Biden administration ends Title 42 border restrictions. While this guarantees escalating border chaos, many Dems welcome the influx of the undocumented. It worked well in turning California blue, despite $6 a gallon gas prices, 13% state income tax rates, and 7% sales tax rates. But the Golden State’s high taxes allow government to grow and public employees are staunch Dem supporters who rule the roost out there. Californians are trapped.
Public employee pension liabilities are crippling the likes of California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island—blue states all. This explains the migration to red states and is a cautionary tale for New Hampshire, where progressives seek to establish similar blue state policies and programs.
The Granite State’s so-called education funding crisis is a case in point. Education spending has never been higher despite a huge drop in public school attendance, concurrent with a drop in assessment scores. Progressives cry out for property tax relief—meaning new broad-based taxes. The circular logic of bringing about tax relief by imposing new taxes didn’t work in the aforementioned blue states and it won’t work here.
The good news is that in this information age reality eventually sets in and truths emerge. More good news is that the November elections are only seven months away. These elections are opportunities to change course not only in Washington but all over the country.
Should voting patterns evolve in places like Durham, Hanover, and Keene then we’ll see encouraging evidence that many young folks in our education communities are finally learning some valuable economic—and political—lessons.
State Representative Mike Moffett of Loudon is a retired professor and former Marine Corps officer. He vice-chairs the House Committee on State-Federal Relations and also serves on the House Education Committee.
