THE STUDENT LOAN BOONDOGGLE: If It Sounds Like an Election Year Handout, That’s Because It Is.

Mr. Biden is using questionable Covid health emergency authority — a very shaky assumption — to hand out this election year relief. More or less 70 percent of predominantly middle-class taxpayers are going to be bailing out something like 30 percent of those most well off. Oh, and that’s right, it does sound like an election year handout, doesn’t it?

Think of this: With the Schumer-Manchin bill and its business tax hikes and IRS assault squad, the government is coming after typical families and working people. That’s the way this shakes out.

Also there’s no debt reduction because in four years the student debt volume will be back to $1.6 trillion. Is this inflationary? Well, yes, at least indirectly. If the interest and principal on your student loan is canceled, then you’ll have more money to spend elsewhere.

It bids up demand while Mr. Biden’s enhanced tax and regulatory strangle holds down supply. I oversimplify here, but that’s one way to look at it.

If this whole student bailout business costs $300 billion over 10 years, as some are estimating, then that wipes out the Schumer-Manchin deficit reduction. I never bought into their deficit reduction anyway.

Another thought: The education department does not remotely have the expertise to handle a $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio. It’s a regulatory and policy agency, not a bank. Shades of the EPA running a $27 billion national “climate bank.” Same nonsense.

What these people lack in competence, they make up in hubris and ill-will. This is a giveaway to the Gentry Class at the expense of the working class. As a friend said, “People who have never lived this well are now forced to subsidize people who lived this well.”

Related: Why Team Biden Might Be Purposefully Crushing the Middle Class.