So It’s Stacey Abrams Pushing the White House on Student Loan Forgiveness – Opinion

To look at student loans and make the decision to cancel it, it takes special foolishness. However, the Biden administration has absolutely destroyed it on this front.

How does it work? You can forgive $10,000 student loan debt up to $150,000 for individuals who make up to $150,000 per annum ($300,000. For married couples). What’s the goal? To get Biden’s approval numbers up (which, by the way, isn’t going to work). What’s the problem? The problem?

Contrary to popular belief, such a policy would only benefit those who have high incomes. That’s partly because lower-income people are less likely to have gone to college. Additionally, many borrowers with the largest loan balances attended graduate and professional programs (medical, business and law school) that lead to higher earnings.

A recent study from economists Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis found that student-loan forgiveness of up to $50,000 for every borrower would work out to an average of $700 for people in the bottom income decile and nearly $5,000 for those in the top decile.

There are large numbers of American voters that know this, including blue-collar workers whom the Democrats claim to represent. These voters are aware of a loan forgiveness program that will impact those who borrowed large amounts for advanced degrees, but they wonder what their $10,000 financial relief is.

Talk to a local truck driver. You might also ask a worker in a factory. A worker on an oil well. Assisting with livestock and crops. Go ask the people who went straight to work to support their families, and they’ll be quick to tell you they don’t want their tax money going to people who chose to get a Master’s degree in Creative Writing.

This phenomenally bad idea, however, was more or less a non-starter even in the Biden White House… that is, until a certain unofficial governor out of Georgia got involved.

James Hohmann, of Washington PostCharlie Sykes spoke to me Bulwark on this issue, and Hohmann’s reporting has uncovered that Georgia’s Stacey Abrams pushed the White House to go ahead with student loan forgiveness.

Charlie Sykes: I mean, seriously, where does Joe Biden think this groundswell is going to come from, except for this small group of highly-entitled college graduates who dominate the staffing and the inner workings of the Democratic party?

James Hohmann I’ve asked, I’ve repeatedly asked people. And I’ve asked a lot of people in the White House this question, and essentially the answer is that this is the fault of Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock.

Charlie Sykes: What?

James Hohmann Stacey Abrams has been browbeating the White House on  this, and says that this is the only way she could win — that this is going to be a base turnout election. This isn’t about persuading people in the middle, it’s about getting the base to turn out. And the base isn’t going to turn out if they don’t do this, and that they have all sorts of stats about how a lot of graduates from HBCUs have all this debt. Many people who are close to President Trump know that this will be a huge disaster. But the president is being pulled really hard by these woke leftists who … believe it’s all about the base.

If there are “a lot of people very close to the president who privately understand this is a complete disaster for them,” then they need to do their job and tell him not to do it. They must push back. He cannot be trusted to sit by and accept this degrading act of policy. This is not how friends, employees, staffers, or family should behave. These women will be forced to comply with the dictates of a woman that cannot win her state.

Abrams’s belief that 2022 will be an election year is purely about getting the base out is a grave mistake. There isn’t enough base for the Democrats to win an election with just them. They need to convince voters to support their cause.

Abrams, however, is working with the misguided belief (often shared by other Democrats) that they are the majority and the Republicans just want to stop their voters casting their ballots. We saw that in her baffling statements about there being a difference between “suppression” and “turnout.”

So, not only is this a bad idea that actually favors the wealthy over the poor, but it is a bad political maneuver that won’t actually help the Democrats win elections. It’s just a bad idea all around.