Voters oppose Biden’s student debt forgiveness once they understand how it works

If you ask people if they support $10,000 in debt cancellation per borrower for people earning less than $150,000, very similar to Biden’s plan, 64% of people say yes, according to the Cato Institute’s new polling. So is Biden’s agenda popular?

Well, not once people are presented with its consequences.

“Nearly two‐thirds of Americans oppose cancellation if forgiving $10,000 per borrower raises their taxes (64%) or if it primarily benefits higher income people (68%),” Cato reports. “About three‐fourths of Americans would oppose student debt cancellation if it caused universities to raise their tuition and fees (76%) or if it caused more employers to require college degrees even if not needed to do the job (71%), also known as ‘credential inflation.’”

“Americans don’t like the costs that many experts believe are associated with federal student loan forgiveness,” Cato Director of Polling Emily Ekins concluded.

Funny how that works. When you present people with the idea of getting stuff for free, they like the sound of it. But once you explain the costs? Not so much.

And rest assured, these aren’t just hypotheticals. These are the realities that will accompany Biden’s plan.

According to the Wharton School of Business, the loan forgiveness will cost taxpayers at least $469 billion and maybe up to $1 trillion. That’s money that, objectively speaking, will lead to higher taxes, either directly, through more debt, or through inflation if the government just prints the money to make up the difference.

So, too, Americans don’t support this plan if it’ll lead to higher tuition prices. Spoiler alert: That’s exactly what it’s going to do. The moral hazard created by loan forgiveness will inevitably allow colleges to jack up tuition rates further because students will be buoyed by the idea that they won’t have to pay back their loans and the new income-based repayment plans, and they’ll be more willing to pay higher prices.

It’s clear voters don’t support Biden’s loan “forgiveness” once they think more critically about it. But unfortunately, the liberal media won’t present people with most of these politically inconvenient realities that accompany the president’s plan; instead, they’ll just uncritically parrot the White House’s talking points.

Here’s hoping voters can see through Biden’s deception and the media’s misdirections to grasp just how terrible this policy actually is.

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a co-founder of Based-Politics.com, a co-host of the BasedPolitics podcast, and a Washington Examiner contributor.