UH OH: Some Dems nervously condemn Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.

Biden knows the regressive aspects of the policy are a huge problem potentially for the party and had a snappy answer ready today when asked about it:

REPORTER: Is this unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans?

BIDEN: Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multi-billion-dollar businesses if they see one of these guys getting all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think?

That’s super, but the reason Americans tolerate tax breaks for mega-billionaires and their companies is a combination of fatalism and optimism. Fatalism: The rich always get away with murder and have the wherewithal to rig the game in their favor. It’s not fair but it’s life, as inevitable as gravity. Optimism: Tax breaks for corporations benefit everyone in theory by maximizing the ability of those businesses to expand, which in turn means more jobs for the local community. States don’t compete with each other to offer perks to Tesla and Amazon because they enjoy online shopping or think EVs are cool. They do it because having a major corporation blow into town means lots of hires, and lots of hires means lots of economic growth.

Telling an average joe that the guy next to him deserves 10,000 bucks just because he went to college and took out some loans to pay for it is much harder to defend. I suppose one could say that debt forgiveness is a form of stimulus for the (already overstimulated) economy, but then you’re stuck having to explain why we don’t just give everyone ten grand instead. Lots of stimulus! The student loan debtors can use the money for their loans and the rest of us who aren’t in debt can invest or enjoy the money as we see fit. There’s simply no good moral or fiscal reason to randomly select this group of people for an enormous federal giveaway while cutting everyone else out of the action, including and especially those who behaved more responsibly than the recipients. Democrats deserve to get wrecked for it. And Ryan, Pappas, and Bennet know it.

Which brings us to: Student Loan Forgiveness Is Left-Wing Trickle-Down Economics.

I’m a blue-collar worker, and when I talk to other blue collar workers about student loan forgiveness, it’s one of those subjects where no one disagrees. It gets a resounding, 100 percent “Hell no!” every time it comes up.

This isn’t because we’re anti-college. Most of the folks I work with and talk to have kids in college or have kids that graduated college. But if you ask if college students’ loans should be paid off by taxpayers, the answer is always the same: No way.

Unlike progressives, we don’t see student debt cancelation as an avenue out of poverty. We see it as a tax on those of us who chose not to go to college, who now have to pay for those who already got a big advantage in the labor market by way of their degree.

Maybe the college degree didn’t give them the job they wanted. But when it all comes down to it, before taking out a big loan, it’s on you to know what you’re getting into. It’s on you to do your due diligence. Big decisions like taking on thousands of dollars in debt have consequences. Why should that burden fall to taxpayers?

And it does fall on taxpayers. Calling it “canceling student loans” is just as dishonest as calling government funded health care or education “free.” None of this is free; it’s taxpayer funded. It’s not cancelation; it’s taking money from the taxpayer and putting it toward paying off student debt held by borrowers.

It’s deeply disrespectful to the people they are trying to convince to help pay for their loans to misrepresent it.

Earlier, I quoted Iowahawk, who said, “Thank god we’re finally addressing the plight of America’s most disadvantaged community, Harvard Law graduates.”

But team Biden is finally addressing an even more disadvantaged community: Majority of White House Staffers Eligible for Biden’s Student-Loan ‘Forgiveness.’

A White House report that detailed the pay of more than 470 staffers last month showed that roughly half of current White House employees make $90,000 or less per year, with the other half making more than $100,000. More than 300 staffers on the list earn less than the $125,000 threshold.

It is not clear how many White House staffers have student-loan balances. One-in-five White House aides required to file a 2021 financial disclosure reported having student loans, according to disclosures reviewed by Bloomberg News. However, only senior or well-paid staffers have to file the disclosures, the report notes.

At least 30 senior White House staffers have student-loan balances, according to the report. However, the staffers mentioned by name in the report — press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and deputy director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti — make a yearly salary that exceeds the $125,000 cut off.

The 30 senior staffers collectively owe as much as $4.7 million, according to the report.

Washington, D.C., residents have more outstanding student-loan debt than residents of any other city in the country, according to a 2021 report from the business insurance research company AdvisorSmith, which found that the average D.C. borrower has $54,982 in unpaid student-loan debt and 16 percent of D.C. residents had unpaid student-loan debt.

As Erick Erickson tweets, “Republicans, Joe Biden has just handed you your general election issue. Like defunding the police, Democrats think making the responsible taxpayers pay the debts of irresponsible woke students is a winner. STFU about Mar-a-Lago and make the general election about this.”