On Wednesday, nearly 153,000 student loan debt holders received a personal email from President Joe Biden.
“Congratulations — all or a portion of your federal student loans will be forgiven because you qualify for early loan forgiveness under my Administration’s SAVE Plan,” the email draft in Politico read.
The email touted Biden’s Student Aid for Vocational and Educational program, which was implemented last year.
Under the program, borrowers who originally took out $12,000 or less in student loans qualify for full loan discharge after 10 years of payments. The amount of time increases incrementally for those who borrowed more.
Biden will email 153,000 student loan borrowers: I’m canceling your debt https://t.co/ySjbKwm5Ko
— POLITICO (@politico) February 21, 2024
“I hope this relief gives you a little more breathing room. I’ve heard from countless people who have told me that relieving the burden of their student loan debt will allow them to support themselves and their families, buy their first home, start a small business, and move forward with life plans they’ve put on hold,” the email adds.
Student loan forgiveness has been a highly criticized platform policy of the Biden administration, which targets one group of people for debt relief at the expense of other U.S. taxpayers.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas wrote on X, “There is no such thing as student loan ‘forgiveness.’ President Biden is simply transferring the debt to make you and your kids pay back student loans that you never took out.”
There is no such thing as student loan “forgiveness.”
President Biden is simply transferring the debt to make you and your kids pay back student loans that you never took out.
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 21, 2024
But above those concerns are the optics that a direct email from Joe Biden about not having to repay a serious chunk of change seems very conveniently crafted to ingratiate borrowers to the president right before votes are cast.
Did Biden break the law in forgiving student loans?
A bunch of young people posting screenshots of a personal email from Joe Biden letting them know he’s canceling their debt is a much better advertisement for the aging president than videos of him tottering to the podium or struggling to put a sentence together.
Even more concerning is that these direct emails from Biden are only being sent to those benefiting from his debt forgiveness plans. This means the White House is effectively leveraging federal student aid to contact specific voters who now owe him a debt of gratitude.
According to a senior administration official, the emails are “an important way to communicate with borrowers, to make sure emails get opened, and to raise the profile of the benefits that we’re offering, and encourage more borrowers to take advantage of them,” Politico reported.
How is this different than sending people a $10 Starbucks card and letting them know it comes courtesy of a candidate for office?
If the reason for this new push for loan forgiveness was truly all about policy, why didn’t the Department of Education send out notifications to all affected borrowers?
How do people who could not repay the loans they willingly took out merit a personal email from the president if it’s not to overwhelm them with his largesse and curry their favor before an election?
In an op-ed published in the Illinois Review, contributor John F. Di Leo eviscerated the Biden administration’s latest ploy to gain votes, writing, “In some states where election law is still enforced, it is illegal for a political candidate to give voters a box lunch, a bottle of booze, or a crisp $20 bill in exchange for their votes. As indeed it should be.
“But this criminal gang goes back to the well every time their polling dips, to buy support with massive, illegitimate debt cancellation like this, robbing the federal treasury just to shore up their reelection odds.
“A republic can only be as legitimate as its elections are honest,” he added. “And when a politician pays voters for their votes, whether with his own money or with the voters’ own neighbors’ money, he turns the nation’s election into a colossal fraud.”
I couldn’t agree more.
When the White House picks winners and losers and financial communications about loan repayment start to sound like campaign ads, it leaves a foul stench.
But it all blends in with the rancidness of decaying democracy that we seem to be living in every day.
