{"id":1621803,"date":"2022-08-25T20:33:15","date_gmt":"2022-08-26T00:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1621803"},"modified":"2022-08-25T20:34:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T00:34:02","slug":"charles-lipson-biden-robs-peter-to-get-pauls-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/charles-lipson-biden-robs-peter-to-get-pauls-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Lipson: Biden Robs Peter to Get Paul\u2019s Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fcharles-lipson-biden-robs-peter-to-get-pauls-vote%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1621803&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on Paul\u2019s vote. That political axiom is the crux of Joe Biden\u2019s decision to forgive vast quantities of student loan debt. He needs Peter\u2019s and Patricia\u2019s votes, and he is bribing them with taxpayer money. Taxpayers know it is not a costless gesture. Their backlash is likely to overwhelm any potential gains.<\/p>\n<p>The problems begin with the program\u2019s cost and inflationary impact. Spending another $300 to $900 billion, the estimated cost, raises consumer demand without increasing supply. Since the program is not funded by tax increases, it will be paid for by printing money. The inflationary consequences are predictable.<\/p>\n<p>Democrats wave away these costs by noting, correctly, that loan forgiveness doesn\u2019t start until next year and won\u2019t happen all at once. Still, the program underscores the most consistent element of the Democrats\u2019 domestic agenda. They are determined to spend, spend, spend. Voters correctly link that spending to inflation and to their own declining standard of living. They see inflation as a tax on everyone, and they know wages have not risen enough to offset that tax. Reminding everyone that inflation is linked to excessive federal spending is not smart politics. But that\u2019s exactly what Biden\u2019s loan forgiveness does.<\/p>\n<p>Second, the program is regressive. That is, it helps middle and upper-middle class recipients, and those who are rising through professional ranks, much more than it helps those lower down the income ladder. The forgiveness covers couples making up to $250,000. That has two political effects, beyond the early Christmas present to those fortunate recipients. The most obvious is that it undercuts the Democrats\u2019 most prominent claim for the past century: \u201cWe are the party of everyday, working-class people, and those Republicans are the party of the rich.\u201d In practice, the parties\u2019 compositions have been shifting for some time, and this program of student loan forgiveness underscores the tectonic change.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just Republicans who object to the gift. Some faithful Democratic voters do, too, though many of them say the $10,000 cap is too small. The NAACP voiced those concerns immediately by stating that this loan forgiveness does little to help most blacks. As the <em>Hill<\/em>\u2019s headline put it, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/3612869-naacp-president-bashes-bidens-reported-plans-on-student-debt-relief\/\">NAACP President Bashes Biden\u2019s reported plans on debt relief.\u201d<\/a> The organization\u2019s president, Derrick Johnson, drove home his point by arguing that Democrats only win elections because they win the votes of so many black votes, especially those of black women. Oddly, Johnson didn\u2019t object because so many blacks receive poor public education and never attend college. No. He wanted even more college debt relief, saying $10,000 wasn\u2019t enough for black students. Progressives like Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Squad also wanted a much bigger program, with up to $50,000 forgiven for each student.<\/p>\n<p>The Democrat Party\u2019s predictable response is that \u201cthis is just a start\u201d and \u201cwe have other programs to help.\u201d Still, the loan forgiveness program, like big rebates for expensive electric cars, shows how hard it is for Democrats to please their party\u2019s divergent constituencies. It\u2019s hard to craft policies that please both poor minorities and rising young professionals. That difficulty is becoming especially clear as Democrats lose their dominant position among Hispanics, who object to open borders, rising crime, progressive social policies, and their subordinate position behind African Americans in the party\u2019s political pecking order.<\/p>\n<p>Third, this massive program of loan forgiveness <a href=\"https:\/\/spectatorworld.com\/topic\/joe-biden-unforgiveable-student-loan-authoritarianism\/\">runs smack into the Constitution\u2019s basic logic<\/a>, which requires that Congress explicitly approve any taxes or expenditures. Whether the president can authorize such a massive spending program on his own, without congressional approval, will ultimately have to be decided by the courts (if anyone has the legal standing to sue the Biden administration). Whatever the courts decide, however, it should be clear that large spending by presidential fiat is yet another step in the growing, unchecked power of the executive branch, overriding the Constitution\u2019s core logic that federal powers must be shared among the three branches.<\/p>\n<p>The same trend, sidelining Congress\u2019s constitutional power, is apparent in international agreements. The single most important agreement of the Obama presidency, the Iran nuclear deal, was never approved as a \u201ctreaty.\u201d Obama simply called it an \u201cagreement.\u201d Biden will do the same if he concludes a deal with the mullahs. So much for the Senate\u2019s treaty power, which is a formal feature of the Constitution. Why didn\u2019t Woodrow Wilson think of that in 1919? He could have avoided all that unpleasantness over the Versailles Treaty. Just call it the Joint Versailles Agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, there\u2019s the problem of \u201cmoral hazard,\u201d as economists call it. The easiest example is fire insurance. If my building is worth only $1 million and I somehow manage to get it insured for $5 million, I don\u2019t have much incentive to protect it against fire. Quite the opposite. That doesn\u2019t necessarily mean I commit arson, although I might. But it definitely reduces my incentive to hire a night watchman and install smoke detectors and sprinklers. Likewise, when Ronald Reagan forgave millions who entered the country illegally, he increased the incentives for others to cross illegally in the future, figuring that they, too, might be forgiven. Forgiving student loans creates similar incentives, to borrow more than you can handle in the hope that Uncle Sam will come to your rescue.<\/p>\n<p>The bigger problem, ethically and politically, is what Biden\u2019s policy says to people who played by the rules and took responsibility for their actions. They paid their own debts or never incurred them because they skipped college and became plumbers or electricians. Democrats hope those poor suckers are outnumbered by young, white-collar voters with student debt who appreciate the gift. Republicans will remind everyone else that there\u2019s no free latte. If you want one, you should pay for it yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can count on Paul\u2019s vote. That political axiom is the crux of Joe Biden\u2019s decision<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1621805,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1621805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}