If there is anyone who is known for highlighting the importance of the working class, it would be “Dirty Jobs” Mike Rowe.
For years he has highlighted the problem of not enough people going into skilled trades, that the sole focus on an expensive college degree as the next step is adversely impacting our country. He’s indicated in the past that he’s not a fan of student loan forgiveness because of the fundamental unfairness of it all. Plus, it doesn’t solve the problem of high tuition, indeed, it makes it worse.
So if there was anyone who was going to have a notable reaction to Joe Biden’s student loan bailout, it would be Rowe.
Rowe did not disappoint, letting loose on Joe Biden in a Facebook post, calling the bailout the “biggest pre-Labor Day slap in the face to working people I’ve ever seen.”
I work hard on this page, (not as hard as I could, perhaps, but pretty hard), to avoid the politics of the moment, and comment only on topics that impact the foundation I’m proud to run – a foundation that awards work-ethic scholarships to individuals who choose to forego an expensive, four-year education in favor of a skilled trade. When I do weigh in, I try to acknowledge both sides of the argument, and make my points with as much respect as I can muster. Today, however, I can see only one side. Today, I can find nothing to respect in the President’s decision to transfer billions of dollars in outstanding student loans onto the backs of those people my foundation tries to assist – the same people I’ve spent the last twenty years profiling on Dirty Jobs.
With that in mind, I’m not going to write the piece I just sat down to write. Instead, I’m going to share the attached article from Charlie Cooke, who writes better than I do, and shares my disdain for what just happened. If you share our disdain, then please, share this post as well. This decision is without question, the biggest pre-Labor Day slap in the face to working people I’ve ever seen.
Cooke’s post notes how this is something all of us — including the air conditioning technicians who saved to open their own business — are going to have to pay for.
And, well . . . what absolute chumps the president has just made of them for that!
Squirm if you like, but that’s the truth of the matter: As of today, the six air-conditioning technicians in my house are on the hook for college loans that were signed for, spent, and enjoyed by other people. Confirming the measure today, President Biden announced that any American who has both college debt they vowed to repay and an individual yearly income under $125,000 (or a family yearly income under $250,000) will be given up to $20,000 by the Treasury — which means by you, and by me, and by everyone else who pays taxes in America.
Imagine what a family making $50,000 thinks about having to pay for bailing out a two-lawyer couple that makes up to $250,000.
So why is Biden doing this?
The answer, I’m afraid to say, is disgustingly classist: Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are better than everyone else. Because Joe Biden and his party believe that college students are of a finer cut. Because Joe Biden and his party prefer college students to you, and they think that those students ought to be rewarded for that by being handed enormous gobs of your money.
Electricians, store managers, deli workers, landscapers, waitresses, mechanics, entrepreneurs? Screw ’em. Sure, college graduates make more money than non-graduates, and their unemployment rate is lower, too. But non-graduates don’t have access to the president, so they don’t matter. They’re tradesmen, the riff-raff, the great unwashed. They’re background noise, dirty-handed types, second-classers. They don’t deserve $10,000 in debt reduction. What would they even do with it? Go hunting? Give it to their church? Their role is to subsidize the superior people, and the superior people go to college.
It’s a crass effort to buy the votes of the “privileged, accredited, self-dealing clerisy that his ever-dwindling political party now calls its base.” It’s using our taxpayer dollars to do it as well, which adds insult to injury — not only don’t we benefit, we actually have to pay for it and it will make inflation far worse, an additional cost on us all. But Biden doesn’t care about that because it’s all about the Democrats doing all they could to hold onto power.
But Biden will find out that this gambit doesn’t work, because not only is it infuriating everyone for all the reasons I’ve said, it’s infuriating some of those in the base as well who don’t think it goes far enough. Even some of Democrats are not on board with this, throwing a mutiny against Biden on this.
If Biden were trying to destroy the country, is there anything he would have done differently than he has done? I don’t think so.