National Review
By Senator Tom Cotton

Last week, President Biden told congressional Democrats that he plans to absolve millions of student-loan borrowers of their debts. Biden and the Democrats have labeled this debt plan “cancellation” or “forgiveness,” but this is nonsense. This illegal and unwise plan would “cancel” nothing. It would only transfer debt from borrowers to taxpayers and redistribute wealth from the responsible to the privileged.

As a candidate, Biden wildly pledged to cancel $10,000 in student debt per borrower, a move that would cost the American taxpayer over $300 billion. The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, supports an even more aggressive plan to cancel up to $50,000 in student-loan debt for every single borrower. These unfair policies betray the public trust and don’t address the real problems with our education system.

America’s $1.7 trillion in student-loan debt didn’t appear out of nowhere. Unscrupulous liberal institutions of higher education have gouged students for years. Colleges have hired thousands of diversity administrators earning six-figure salaries and padded their already outrageous endowments. By emphasizing left-wing ideology over quality education, many universities have reduced the value of their product while increasing its costs. While lecturing students about the greed of the American economy, they have exemplified the most rapacious greed imaginable, saddling their listeners with tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars of debt.

Although this exploitation is contemptible, it is no excuse to make taxpayers pick up the tab. The responsibility for taking the loan still resides with the borrower. Those with student-loan debt decided that their education was worth the cost — and it is their right to make that determination. Democrats should not infantilize young adults. After all, if liberals believe toddlers are capable of choosing their gender, why are young adults incapable of taking out debt and paying it back? The stakes are certainly lower in the latter case.

Student debt is disproportionately held by those who are most able to pay it back. Almost one-third of all student debt is owed by the wealthiest 20 percent of households, while just 8 percent is held by the bottom 20 percent. College graduates make more money and are more likely to be employed than those who haven’t attended college. The average doctorate holder earns more than twice as much as the average high-school graduate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics even has a page on its website titled “education pays” that highlights the improved economic outlook of those who go to college. If education pays, it should be able to pay its debts, too.

But Democrats want lower- and middle-income Americans — as well as those who have already paid off their debts — to subsidize the education of disproportionately better-off college students and college graduates. It is the worst kind of class warfare — a war on the responsible and hard-working.

The Democrats’ plan also reinforces the broken “college for all” model that orients almost all of our country’s educational investment toward college, based on the arrogant assumption that there isn’t a praiseworthy or dignified alternative to college and student debt. To them, college is the only respectable path in life. This is, of course, false. Only around a third of Americans over 25 have a college degree. Fewer than 15 percent of the population has student debt. The Democrats are proposing to transfer the debts of a small minority of the population who, conveniently, tend to be loyal Democratic voters.

Instead of pumping hundreds of billions to bail out liberal academia, we should invest in and reform our oft-neglected workforce-training programs, apprenticeships, and vocational-education system. These non-college pathways particularly benefit states such as Arkansas and working-class communities, which have been unjustly overlooked. Instead of throwing good money after bad, we should invest in programs that work.

We should also hold liberal colleges and universities accountable for hiking tuition on young people, while amassing vast tax-exempt fortunes. We should demand that institutions of higher education use their billion-dollar endowments to lower tuition, and we ought to tax their endowments and send those revenues to vocational-education programs. My Ivory Tower Endowment Tax Act would institute a wealth tax on colleges and universities that hoard their extreme riches and direct this revenue to vocational education.

Unless this loan-forgiveness plan is blocked by Congress or struck down by the courts, the Democrats will try to do it again and again. They will continue to enrich and reward their price-gouging friends at liberal colleges and universities, they will turbocharge the cycle of irresponsible borrowing by students, and they will inflict trillions in debt on hard-working Americans.

The Republican Party must stop Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer’s war on the responsible and protect our children from being on the hook for hundreds of billions — or even trillions — in student loans that they never took out.