White House Launches Dishonest Attack on Republicans in Defense of Student Loan Forgiveness

Isaac SchorrApr 12th, 2024, 3:48 pm
 

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Biden administration has repeatedly fallen back on a misleading talking point in defense of its various student loan forgiveness schemes.

Last summer, after the Supreme Court rejected his original sweeping plan, President Joe Biden excoriated Republican members of Congress for taking out and having loans forgiven under the Paycheck Protection Program, which was established during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“You can’t help a family making 75 grand a year, but you can help a millionaire and you have your debt forgiven?” asked Biden rhetorically. “The hypocrisy is stunning,” he marveled.

Since that decision came down, Biden has sought to nullify the Court’s decision in piecemeal fashion, with his latest attempt coming this week. Naturally, Biden fell back on the same hypocritical canard in defense of it.

When Rep. Pat Fallon (R-X) characterized the forgiveness program as an “illegal, vote-buying scheme,” the White House responded by pointing out that Fallon’s companies had $500,000 worth of PPP loans forgiven. Later, it also posted a graphic featuring the names, faces, and amount of money in PPP loans that 13 Republican members of Congress had forgiven.

“This you?” inquired the operators of the official government account smugly.

Those Republicans being accused of hypocrisy have every right to be frustrated by this tendentious comparison, but it’s American voters who should be even more insulted.

Is the president’s opinion of Americans so low that he thinks they will be deceived into accepting this false equivalency? The Paycheck Protection Program was from its very start a de facto grant program. Under its terms, small businesses could take out loans that would be forgiven so long as they spent the money they took out on certain enumerated expenses and did not let go of any staff or lower the wages of that staff.

As the name suggests, it was not designed to be a boon to entrepreneurs, but to keep people employed at a time when an epochal event and government policy were conspiring to economically devastate American businesses. The loans were taken out with the understanding that they would be forgiven if their recipients abided by the rules laid out in a federal law passed by Congress and signed by the president.

You might note some minor differences between those who participated in such a program, and the Biden administration’s attempt to circumvent the constitutional order and unilaterally compel the rest of the country to pay off loans willingly taken out by the upper middle class on their way into that caste.

President Biden and his staff are aware that there’s no comparison here, yet they continue to make it because all of their other arguments in favor of mass student loan forgiveness are so weak. Oh, and because they have enough contempt for voters to believe they’ll buy it.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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