“Just got a call to let me know my student debt has been canceled. This is why elections matter. Thanks @JoeBiden.”
Ben Kamens, the communications director for Representative Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio), posted that on X today. It included a picture of the letter he received from Nelnet, the company that serviced his student loans. The letter begins, “Congratulations! The Biden-Harris administration has forgiven your federal student loan(s) listed below with Nelnet in full.”
Kamens’s two loans were taken out in 2010. The original principal balances were $2,750 and $5,500. Again, he posted this on X for the entire world to see.
As the text of his message demonstrates, he’s not the least bit ashamed about the fact that he, a grown man and college graduate with a full-time job, was apparently unable to repay debt with a principal of $8,250 over a span of 14 years.
I don’t know Kamens’s life story, and there could be some kind of hardship in his life that made that difficult to accomplish. It is nonetheless true that lots of people with their own hardships are able to repay debt of that size according to the agreement that they made when they took it out, because they prioritize paying back their debts.
But Kamens did not, and now his political party has decided to give him taxpayer money instead. As an added bonus, the letter notes that because of the American Rescue Plan Act, the balance of the loans forgiven is not considered taxable income at the federal level. Democrats want to step up tax enforcement with a larger IRS, but they wrote into law that their special one-time income for people who didn’t pay back their student debt, a category that includes White House staff members in addition to their congressional staff, is tax-free.
Kamens’s post comes the day after the Congressional Budget Office added $400 billion to its deficit projection for this year. That includes a $145 billion increase in outlays due to the Biden administration’s student-loan programs.
What is Kamens’s takeaway? “This is why elections matter.” Ah, yes, the sacred trust of democracy: Where voters cast a secret ballot to make their voice heard in the political process — so that the candidate wins who will give them money that the IRS took from other people. That’s what elections are about, according to Kamens.
Rarely is the Democratic political vision so clearly on display.