This was something with no political downside.
I will agree if we define the audience as “the masses”. If, on the other hand, we consider the subset of people who actually engage in critical thinking, things should be different.
This was a political stunt to gain votes. And, as you seem to suggest, it will still be used as yet another us-vs-them wedge tool used to divide and polarize the population.
What’s outrageous is that the cost of university education has been inflated precisely due to government involvement through guarantees.
Everyone should be horrified that 17 year olds are agreeing to loans in the $150K to $300K range (and more). And sometimes this is for degrees that will never lead to high income jobs. I saw this piece a while back on this 32 year old with some kind of a sociology degree that cost her $250K. She was making $60K a year, with no real prospects to do significantly better.
My guess is that a reasonable cost for a degree is in a range similar to the cost of cars. The idea being to be able to pay it off in 5 to 7 years at the average earning potential for the corresponding degree. That might mean $20K to $150K max. For example, a CS undergrad degree should probably be in the $20K to $50K range.
The only way that happens is in a market where government isn’t in the student loan business.
To be clear, that's a tiny minority which rarely impacts the outcomes of elections, and elections are what matter to politicians.
What a great victory!
That doesn't seem to be accurate: a new debt relief regulatory effort was initiated today, plus a repayment “on ramp” that limits the impact of ending the pause, plus a new income-based time-limited repayment program that will have low income borrowers paying $0. (The last of which was, IIRC, announced in principal around the same time as the forgiveness program, but not finalized in detail.)
https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-cardona-sta...
Regulatory notice on the first part is here:
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/highered/reg/hearulemaking/2023/n...
That's how modern US politics works. They have given up on actually solving problems a long time ago. And people are stupid enough to buy into this nonsense.
if they were interested in actually helping the disadvantaged, then there are plenty of workarounds, like forgiving the interest and fees on student loans rather than forgiving principal. this would be more impervious to the idea that the executive branch was trying to wholesale rewrite legislation, rather than tweaking it on the margin, which was part of the court's rationale in this case.