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Democrats are using the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to advance a radical mass student loan forgiveness agenda.
© Provided by Washington Examiner When congressional Democrats created the PSLF program, they intentionally made it narrowly targeted to limit the number of borrowers who received forgiveness. In doing so, Democrats made a false promise to millions of borrowers and then subsequently blamed the Trump administration for the mess the Democrats created. The Biden administration’s ploy to broaden this broken program is yet another example of Democrats hiding from their responsibilities of legislating at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The Biden administration’s overhaul of PSLF is unjustified and unworkable. And we already know from experience that the more Democrats try to “fix” this program, the more bureaucratic confusion they create. The PSLF program will be unrecognizable by the time the Biden administration is done with it. Under the new proposal, the Department of Education is retroactively allowing borrowers to receive credit for payments the law clearly does not include. Disregarding the law to please progressive advocates is not only reprehensible, but it's also ironic given the Democrats unilaterally wrote and passed it in the first place.
So, what does this skirting of the law look like for hardworking taxpayers? In addition to being on the hook for billions in forgiven loans, they’ll pay borrowers “refunds” if a borrower made more than the minimal number of payments required under the law. What’s worse, the Biden administration is expanding eligibility to borrowers who were never intended to receive forgiveness, meaning taxpayers will be forced to shoulder the cost of loan forgiveness for those who least need it.
In addition to furthering the permanent pandemic narrative, the Biden administration justifies this gross abuse of authority through deceptive claims about “technical errors” and administrative mismanagement. As I wrote to the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Democrats habitually skew statistics in their attempt to prove that the previous administration and those tasked with carrying out this program have failed PSLF applicants. Yet they leave out the fact that the vast majority of denials were justified because borrowers simply did not meet the necessary qualifications.
According to the Government Accountability Office, 71% of applicants to the Temporary Expanded Public Service Loan Forgiveness program were denied because they had not first submitted a PSLF application. Of those who had submitted a PSLF application, only 4% met eligibility requirements. These numbers don’t demonstrate a failure of the program, but rather Democrats’ original intent to keep this program narrow.
It’s not a secret that I have been against the PSLF program since its inception. This is because I don’t believe the federal government should be in the business of picking winners and losers. This program is set up to prioritize certain workers over others. Why should a nurse working at a hospital qualify for loan forgiveness while one working in private practice does not? Is one nurse’s job more important than the other? Also, why should a journalist working at NPR qualify for loan forgiveness while one working at the Washington Post does not? And arbitrarily paying for the student loans of a clinician at Planned Parenthood but offering no relief to an OB-GYN in private practice is clearly unfair. Moreover, why should people working blue-collar jobs foot the bill for student loans of more than 550,000 borrowers, many of whom are making more money than themselves?
The answer is that Democrats are addicts and spending is their drug. Neither a national debt that exceeds our GDP nor growing inflation will slow them down. Their answer to every problem is to throw money at it. The student loan debt crisis is no different. Instead of addressing the root causes of ballooning tuition costs and dismal graduation rates, Democrats are trying to apply Band-Aids through administrative fiat.
I can assure you these won’t hold. Democrats must stop taking the lazy way out. It is time for real solutions to address the problems facing higher education institutions. It appears Democrats aren’t willing to do this, and their talk about helping students is just about garnering flashy headlines.
I am against expanding blanket loan forgiveness programs, especially when it’s done by presidential decree. While this kind of executive overreach is typical of the Biden administration, it weakens the separation of powers — a fundamental tenet of our republican system of government. Unelected bureaucrats should not be the ones making our laws, at least not if we mean to remain a free and self-governed people.
The Biden administration’s abuse of power has gone too far, and it must stop now.
Virginia Foxx represents North Carolina's 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the Republican leader of the House Committee on Education and Labor.
Typical Democrat communists
using teh Treasury to Buy Votes for their communist cause of tyranny
Pandering for election to destroy Freedom in America
Buck fiden
From my cold dead hands!
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