President Joe Biden’s plan to have the federal government pay off hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans has received blistering criticism, all of it deserved.
It’s a constitutional offense: Congress is supposed to authorize sweeping spending programs, not the president acting on his own. It’s economically risky, given our persistent high inflation. It’s perverse distributionally: A lawyer-doctor couple making $249,000 together will be able to walk away from debts.
It solves none of the structural problems of higher education and its financing and may make them worse . It is socially destructive, too, threatening to exacerbate the growing divide between Americans who have college degrees and those who do not.
