Leftist logic is once again on full display, and its hypocrisy should (but probably won’t) embarrass its disciples.
After more than two years, the nationwide freeze on college loan repayments is finally set to expire this month, so progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are demanding politicians act to “ cancel ” this debt entirely.
The Biden administration apparently agrees that elite college graduates cannot possibly be expected to pay back the money they freely borrowed from taxpayers, because it has begun developing plans to execute a massive “cancellation” of debt for borrowers. Yet, at the same time, administration officials assure us we’re experiencing the best economic circumstances in the nation’s history. Something isn’t adding up, but far be it from the federal government to care about consistency.
But perhaps the most insulting contradiction is the Left’s doublespeak in supporting student debt forgiveness while opposing private K-12 school choice programs. In Arizona, for example, left-wing lawmakers tried to block an expansion of the state’s education savings account program, which is now the most robust school choice program in history. The program gives every family the option to receive a $7,000 annual Empowerment Scholarship per child to put toward tutoring, private school, or at-home education for their child, rather than forcing taxpayers to pay the $ 14,000 it would otherwise cost to send that student to a public school.
So where is the Left when it comes to this massive win for parents?
They’re busy denouncing ESAs for “using public funds for private schools.” Yet last I checked, the Left wants a bailout of college debt for public and private university graduates.
The Left claims ESAs are a handout to the rich because they lack income-based eligibility limits. Yet leaders of teachers unions such as Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle demand universal college loan forgiveness regardless of wealth: “We ask that your administration enact robust student loan forgiveness that cannot be means tested,” they recently said to the Biden administration.
Leftist politicians routinely declare (after it gets revealed that their families were able to escape public schools for private ones) that they paid for their students’ private schooling themselves, so other families should have to as well. Yet this “pay for it yourself” sentiment suddenly vanishes when their debt “forgiveness” schemes would force those who’ve worked to put themselves through college (or who’ve already paid back their own college loans) to also pay back the loans of others.
The only way in which the Left’s logic is consistent on these two policies is that both represent a desire to subsidize the Left’s preferred monopolies to the exclusion and detriment of any competition. Spending more than virtually any country on Earth per K-12 student is apparently a good thing — as long as every penny is directed solely to the union-dominated district school system. And spending whatever is necessary to prop up the bloat of progressive universities is worthwhile — even if it means penalizing workers who chose to forgo higher education and students who paid off their debt themselves.
The fact is that school choice is exactly the kind of bipartisan policy that even the Left would support if it didn’t threaten the monopoly they’ve built for themselves. Indeed, ESA usage in Arizona is highest in the low-income communities the Left claims to represent. ESAs make private school tuition affordable to students of all backgrounds, including low- and middle-income families.
School choice also just makes sense. ESAs like Arizona’s allow taxpayers to have more control over where some of their tax dollars go. They also save taxpayers thousands of dollars per student compared to the cost of public education mandated by all state constitutions.
At their core, both the ESA and college loan issues come down to a reality the Left does not seem to understand: Incentives matter.
Allowing parents to direct their own child’s K-12 education via an ESA empowers them to select the best provider available, which will in turn incentivize schools to outcompete each other in quality.
Student loan schemes, on the other hand, actively destroy any incentive to evaluate whether a particular college education is worth the price tag. Retroactively transferring the burdens of college loans from one taxpayer to another will simply lead to an even greater bloat within higher education and even larger loans as borrowers learn that they aren’t really on the hook for them anyway.
Indeed, while school choice empowers families, loan transfer schemes will simply discourage any rational actor from repaying their student loans going forward, knowing that Uncle Sam (or Joe) might wake up any morning and simply waive away those debts — onto others.
Matt Beienburg is the director of education policy and director of the Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy at the Goldwater Institute.
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