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The election year promises of free stuff are in full swing. Democrats and Republicans alike make campaign promises. But with Democrats the promises are often filled with the allure of getting something for nothing. 

Free medical care, free wage increases, free Obamaphone, free housing, and most recently the promise to wipe out student loans regardless of how useless the degree that it purchased. In recent days the Biden plan to wipe out student loans was given a partial reprieve by a federal appeals court, meaning that the Supreme Court will likely hear the issue at some point. Thanks to President Biden a brand-new entitlement class has sprung up: the liberal arts student loan recipient class. 

A Democrat congressional staffer recently crowed on social media that he received word his student loan had been paid off. The young beneficiary of Biden’s largesse said “elections have consequences!” and posted an image of the notice he received in the mail which said in part, “Congratulations! The Biden-Harris Administration has forgiven your federal student loans listed below with Nelnet in full.”  

That same staffer makes over $80,000 a year. He is paid with tax dollars and his loan was paid off with tax dollars. Journalist Doug Powers responded, 

“Always fun when somebody who works in government thanks somebody else in government for saddling others who didn’t agree to the debt for paying the loans off. My son who works 12 hours a day installing metal roofs will be impressed with how his tax dollars are being spent,”

Well said. 

Ostensibly the Biden administration believes those who knowingly entered into a contract shouldn’t be held accountable to their contractual obligations because…..well, because its “hard?”…..or something equally insulting. 

This plan is wrong on an epic scale –  legally, ethically, mentally and morally. 

From a legal standpoint, Biden has no privity of contract. The loan agreement governs the terms between the parties. It was freely entered into, consideration given, services received, payment due. Show me another contract in the world that can be written off outside of Bankruptcy without the lender having a say-so. The legal world does not work this way. Try it with your mortgage and see what happens. 

Secondly, the payoff is ethically wrong. How can a President with fiduciary responsibility to the American public-at-large justify lightening the contractual obligations of some citizens without consideration to those who carry similar burdens? Picking winners and losers is not the role of government. Can Joe Biden decide to pay off a $50,000 loan used to earn a degree in underwater basket weaving for one citizen, while at the same time offer no relief to another citizen who borrowed $50,000 to start his own company? An ethical dilemma, no doubt.

What about the mental consideration? What thought processes must go into the determination to spend someone else’s money to pay off another person’s contract? What are we to think of the thinking of a President who says on the one hand he must use billions of tax dollars to pay off student loans because of hard economic times, while at the same time declaring emphatically that his economy is great and there are no hard times? The mental machination eludes most people and the only conclusion is that he is lying, or deluded. The same brain cannot conjure such conflicting expressions without one of those two conclusions. 

But there is another argument that bears equal discussion. Can the student loan program be defended morally? It is unreasonable to tell an entire generation debts are really not their fault, contracts have no meaning, and they shouldn’t have to bear such responsibility.  The Biden Administration is immorally perpetrating the growth of a welfare mentality in the next layer of our societal evolution. The kind of mentality that says “I’m a victim and therefore I should be rescued” is what keeps otherwise strong and healthy members of society from learning the value of taking calculated risks. An expectant society has no need to press through adversity. They expect reward regardless of personal productivity. Biden is working to raise our kids to believe that there is no hope of success without someone else’s benevolence. 

A healthy society cannot survive on the notion that no one should be held accountable for their own actions. Millions and millions of productive citizens are making a go of it, contributing to their communities. Americans who take the great risks, and know the great failures, but also know the great achievements, are the ones now being called upon to pat the poor souls on the head that have borne the ignominy, the burden, the pain of being asked to pay their own debts.

Longtime Southern Baptist Pastor Adrian Rogers was spot on when he said:

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Legally, ethically, mentally, and morally, the Biden student loan payoff plan fails to meet muster. There is no free lunch. 

Pay your own way.