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Our View: Student loan forgiveness can take work incentive away

There are several problems with President Joe Biden’s proposal to cancel portions of student loan debt.

First, the plan is an executive action.

With so many people having to pay their student loans, a measure this contentious should go through proper, transparent debate of our U.S. House and Senate. It should have to win majorities of our directly-elected lawmakers. If it were to go through the correct process of transparency and compromise perhaps some of the other problems could be corrected or at least mitigated.

Second, our country has a national debt of more than $30 trillion. Some estimates by conservative publications like National Review place the cost of this proposal at $330 billion. Even if their calculations assume the worst, the cost of this bill will make our debt even worse.

Third, the proposal is not narrowly tailored enough.

Men and women making up to $125,000 would be eligible for some cancellation of their student loan debt. For comparison, the median household income in Clinton County in 2020, according to U.S. Census figures, was $52,145. We suspect any plan negotiated and passed by our legislators would address student loan debt for the those facing the most dire circumstances — not individuals making more than twice our county’s median household income.

Perhaps the plan could also have stipulations and requirements for public service, making it more palatable to skeptics.

Fourth, this proposal does nothing to address the underlying problem — that tuition over the past several decades has increased at a rate unacceptably greater than any other measure of the cost of living.

We believe real solutions to the spiraling costs of education can be found — through our legislative process, which requires debate and compromise. With greater concern both for our nation’s troubling tendency to spend more than we have and for ensuring there are criteria to prioritize those who truly need it and are willing to earn it.

Through a focus on the costs themselves rather than forgiveness of what increasingly appears to be an inadequate way of financing those costs.

We hope conservatives and centrists are willing to pursue those real solutions.

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