Are you ready for some strongly-worded letters? Because that’s apparently all we are going to get from top Republican leaders after Joe Biden announced he’s going to illegally “cancel” student debt for some of the nation’s most well-off individuals.
As RedState reported, the plan will wipe out $10,000 worth of debt ($20,000 for pell grants) for people making less than $125,000 ($250,000 for joint filers). It gets so much worse, though. Apparently, the administration is going to allow people to use their 2020 income to qualify, which means lots of people making lots of money today are going to be eligible based on an artificially down income during the pandemic.
For my money, this is one of the most grotesque, morally deranged moves in modern American history. Yes, the welfare state isn’t new, but this is different. It’s a direct, targeted redistribution of wealth from the lower-middle class (and many in the upper-middle class who did things right) to mostly liberal, college-educated individuals who make more money and have far better employment prospects. Truly, it’s late-stage republic kind of stuff.
As I wrote a day prior to the announcement, it’s also impeachable behavior. Given the magnitude of the situation, you’d hope Republicans would be running to the closest microphone to explain exactly what was happening and to let it be known that Biden has crossed a line with his illegal act.
Instead, we got this.
Notice what’s not mentioned in those statements. Despite Biden committing (once it becomes official) the most transparently impeachable act in decades, McConnell and the rest still can’t bring themselves to say that he needs to be impeached. You see, only bad orange men who make mean tweets can be impeached. That’s written into the constitution somewhere. But a president who blatantly breaks the law with full intent to do so in order to buy votes for a mid-term? Well, we just don’t want to be too rash, right?
What this really comes down to is the perversion of Washington being put on full display. To these beltway apparatchiks, breaking the law is fine as long as you do it in a way that can be described as “normal.” What Biden is doing is illegal, but it’s always couched in the machinations of the bureaucracy. Trump was loud and disrupted the status quo, though, so he had to be dealt with despite never committing a clear impeachable offense.
Returning back to the GOP’s old guard, the best these political mediocrities could come up with is to shout about how “unfair” Biden’s illegal student debt “cancelation” is. To reiterate, with all their overpaid consultants and years of experience in Washington, they couldn’t come up with anything better than crying on social media about fairness. Nothing about impeaching Biden, nothing about its illegality. Just shouting at clouds. It’s astonishing, and it’s infuriating. It’s also exactly why the GOP needs to make big changes at the top.