The Federal Assistance to Initiative Repayment (FAIR) Act, a supposed “fiscally responsible, targeted alternative” to Biden’s loan forgiveness plan still forgives debt for some students. Two bills proposed this spring demonstrate that Republicans will even compromise fiscally conservative principles to avoid challenging the “college for all” ideal.
Republicans have a unique opportunity to challenge this premise, but they rarely do. But they don’t attempt to challenge the presumption that everybody should attend college. Democrats respond by proposing to give students immediate and tangible benefits to compensate for the ever-increasing costs of attendance. Strict employment regulations, the easy availability of federal student aid, and pushing every person to attend college have made college an expensive barrier to accessing many decent jobs. Worse, they ignore the fact that debt forgiveness was a response to legitimate issues with the higher education system-issues that Republican politicians have inadequately addressed. While conservative media stir up public rancor against the unfair debt forgiveness policies of Democrats, Republicans seem to be asleep at the wheel, hoping that a few fragile lawsuits would stop the nearly half-trillion-dollar plan from moving forward. The unfortunate reality is that Republicans had no long-term coherent plan for higher education-and still don’t. But with higher education costs becoming increasingly salient in the lives of voters, the Republican proposals lacked grounding. Sure, some of these proposals are benign-some are even reasonable improvements. What were the Republicans doing on higher education during the 2010s, if not addressing student debt and rising college costs? They were tilting at windmills, proposing trivial improvements on cost transparency, adjusting student aid eligibility for foreign medical schools, and carving out student loan deferments for special groups such as airline pilots. Republicans had years to work out a solution to the student debt problem but failed to act until it was already too late. But this bill was proposed in the summer of 2022, just a few weeks before Biden’s well-anticipated announcement of his debt forgiveness plan. Luckily, Republicans in Congress have a bill called the REAL Reforms Act, which would limit the authority of all future executives so that no such unilateral action on debt forgiveness could occur. The Biden administration’s actions on debt forgiveness represent a gross overreach of the executive branch’s power, as shown in the various lawsuits that they provoked. And, of course, President Biden ran on a moderated version of debt forgiveness. Warren announced she would use executive authority to cancel up to $50,000 of student loan debt in 2019. As Democrats tried to out-do one another on who could offer the most benefits for their constituents, it's no wonder that it eventually led to calls for massive student debt jubilees. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination on tuition-free college, influenced Democrats to adopt more extreme policies. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and the erstwhile presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. For-profit-college scandals further increased targeted calls for debt relief by Democratic politicians such as Sen. There were informal calls for debt forgiveness back in 2012, following the Occupy Wall Street movement. Indeed, the denouement of the loan forgiveness saga that has spanned the last decade should prompt Republicans to engage in some self-reflection about their lack of a coherent policy vision on higher education.įor years, there were telling signs that Democrats would pursue student loan forgiveness as part of the larger push for government-subsidized education. But the fact that this win hinged entirely on fragile arguments for standing passing through the Supreme Court should be unsettling to voters and politicians alike. This decision is a victory both for taxpayers, who won’t have to fund this unfair wealth redistribution, and for our constitutional system of checks and balances. The Supreme Court stopped the Biden administration from pushing through an unprecedented loan forgiveness program through unconstitutional executive overreach.
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