Heritage Economist Accuses Biden of Playing ‘Politics’ by Extending Student Loan Pause Through November 2024

Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told Breitbart News Daily that President Joe Biden is playing “politics” by trying to extend the student loan pause through November 2024 after his latest loss at the Supreme Court.

Antoni spoke to Breitbart News Daily host Matthew Boyle after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s debt transfer plan, ending a $430 billion write-off that has been slammed as an election gimmick.

Antoni explained in an op-ed:

Taxpayers can be grateful that the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s unconstitutional student loan bailout. The justices saved America from not just a massive expense on the current federal balance sheet, but excessive borrowing and higher tuition costs in the future.

Biden’s student loan amnesty plan was a misuse of the 2003 HEROES Act and would have put taxpayers on the hook for up to $20,000 per student loan borrower. Even those borrowers with relatively high incomes were eligible for the handout; households making $250,000 annually were eligible for up to $40,000 in “forgiveness” – a euphemism for a taxpayer bailout.

The exact cost of such a bailout would have been far higher than the White House’s estimate of $380 billion, with some estimates exceeding $1 trillion. The disparity between these estimates stems from the fact that a taxpayer-funded bailout of student loan debt would have created incentives that in turn change people’s behavior.

Antoni and Boyle discussed how the student loan “forgiveness” plan — actually a debt tranfer, or taxpayer bailout, as Antoni explained — would only raise college tuition prices; however, Antoni warned that the Biden administration will employ more tricks to extend the student loan pause, which is expected to end shortly.

He said, “Under Joe Biden, you have a lot of students who have never paid anything on their student loans because the moratorium has been in place this entire time. And on top of that, they [the Biden administration] have now announced an on-ramp program, which is as deceptively named as the Inflation Reduction Act was, which essentially, even if an account goes into default beginning in October when payments are supposed to be resuming — even if an account goes into default, the Department of Education will not actually classify those accounts as going into default for an entire year.”

“In other words, when would they go into default? In November of 2024. In other words, you would have that payment pause effectively extended through the election, which is then when it will miraculously kick back in. I’m sorry, but the skeptic in me says that politics is in play here,” he added.

Related: Biden snaps at a reporter, saying he did not give any false hope about student loan program:

White House

Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.