ATR Supports Rep. Hinson’s Amendment to Prevent Biden’s Plan to Forgive Student Loan Debt 

President Biden is currently deciding whether to cancel $10,000 in student loan debt for borrowers. Because this plan would be reckless, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) has submitted an amendment during today’s full committee markup to the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHSE) appropriations bill.  

Rep. Hinson’s amendment would prohibit the federal government from using the funds appropriated in the bill to cancel, forgive, or defer payments on student loan debt. The amendment also provides an exception for existing loan forgiveness programs, as of March 12^th, 2020. For example, this bill would not prevent loan forgiveness for borrowers who prove their school misled them or engaged in other misconduct in violation of certain state laws.

As detailed in the amendment:

“None of the funds appropriated by this title may be used by the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Attorney General to implement, or publish in any form, any regulation, or take any action, that modifies, alters, amends, cancels, discharges, for10 gives, or defers the repayment of any student debt not expressly permitted within statute or regulation as in effect on March 12, 2020, regarding covered loans, except to the extent that such regulation or action reflects the clear and unequivocal intent of Congress in legislation.”

This amendment is extremely important, as student loan forgiveness would cost an immense amount of money, drive inflation, be fundamentally unfair, serve affluent elites, and create a moral hazard.  

Student Loan Debt Cancellation Would Exacerbate Out-of-Control Spending  
The plan to cancel $10,000 in debt for each borrower would cost a whopping $373 billion at a time when the national debt is already out of control. The Biden Administration has already spent $124 billion to $130 billion so far extending the moratorium on student loan repayments.  

In 2020, the U.S. government spent over $6 trillion. In 2021, the U.S. spent $6.82 trillion, or 30% of the economy. The U.S. now holds about $243,000 of debt per taxpayer. The CBO projects that U.S. interest costs will triple within the next decade — from $331 billion this year to $910 billion in 2031, accounting for 12 percent of the entire federal budget. In 2021, U.S. interest payments on its debt alone costed roughly $2,600 per household.   

Democrats often try to justify the immense cost of this plan by claiming it would stimulate the economy, as borrowers would have more money to spend. In reality, this plan would cost the government far more than it would provide stimulus. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget conducted an analysis finding that for every dollar the government would spend in student loan forgiveness, only about 3 cents to 27 cents of economic activity would be produced.  

Student Loan Debt Cancellation Would Drive Inflation  

This kind of spending would inevitably make inflation even worse than it is.

The federal government is already flooding the economy with so much money that demand is growing too fast for production to keep up. In April, inflation remained high at 8.6 percent.  

Joint Economic Committee Republicans, led by Ranking Member Mike Lee (R-Utah) released a report which found that, since the beginning of Biden’s presidency, prices having increased 11.7 percent, costing the average American household $635 in May alone. 

Student Loan Debt Cancellation Would Be Unfair and Serve Affluent Elites  

Not only would this policy primarily hurt low-income Americans by exacerbating inflation, but it’d also be fundamentally unfair to them. Many low-income Americans decided not to go to college or took a cheaper route via community college due to the high cost of tuition.   

It is unfair to the millions of Americans that were responsible and did not rack up tens of thousands of dollars of debt. It is unfair to Americans who served in the military to receive free education, or those who have worked long hours to put themselves through school instead of going into debt. This policy is also unfair to those who were proactive in paying off their debt. All these sacrifices were made by people who could only work with the information they had: if they took out loans, they would be held to their contractual obligations.   

Not only were these Americans deprived of a certain amount of upward mobility that comes with high education, but now they’re being told that their sacrifices were futile.   

In reality, the elite benefit. 

The Brookings Institution described those who would benefit most from student debt forgiveness as “higher income, better educated, and more likely to be white.” The top 20 percent of households currently hold $3 in student loan debt for every $1 of debt held by the bottom 20 percent of earners. About 75 percent of student loan repayments come from the top 40 percent of earners, as the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes.   

Student Loan Debt Cancellation Could Make Tuition Prices Worse, Create Moral Hazard  

Even after spending billions to cancel debt and deeply harming the economy in the process, this policy may actually worsen the student loan crisis for future generations. For starters, the primarily driver of absurd tuition prices has been the federal government’s subsidization of college. If the government decides to further subsidize education costs, this will motivate colleges and universities to charge student even more in tuition.   

Further, cancelling student debt will signal to future borrowers that their debt, too, will be canceled at some point. In this way, college students will take on as much debt as they wish, as they expect no consequences of taking it on. Existing borrowers with remaining balances may stop making payments in hopes that more of their debt will be canceled in the future. A marketplace of 18-year-olds taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt with no intention of ever paying it back is radically unsustainable.   

Lawmakers should support Rep. Hinson’s amendment to the LHHSE appropriations bill. Members can no longer allow the President to spend hundreds of billions of dollars without congressional approval – especially because it would exacerbate the current most important issue to Americans: inflation.