Prevent College Debt, Don’t Just Forgive It

It should be the goal of conservatives to institute rapid, expansive college-tuition deflation, with a consequent cashiering of useless administrators.

Among conservatives, it was time to pop open bottles of champagne when the Supreme Court ruled that Joe Biden’s attempt to forgive $430 billion in college debt for an estimated 26 million borrowers was unlawful.

The White House plan was plainly unconstitutional: An early War on Terror measure that Congress designed for a small number of military-service members should not be applied to a significant portion of the U.S. population over 20 years later. It was also unjustly regressive — it robs from non-college workers to give to doctors and lawyers. It was an act of class warfare on behalf of the affluent against everyone else.

And the White House is already trying a “plan B” for debt forgiveness — showing that its pandemic justification was just a convenient political expediency. Forgiving college debt is a political payoff and lure for young voters in 2024. It is the Biden administration’s attempt to transform the act of attending an American college, from one of bettering yourself and your prospects through learning, to something more like a political gang allegiance.