Sanders and Warren Have a $1.6 Trillion Bribe for Dem Voters

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

62% of Democrat primary voters have a college degree. 29% have a postgrad degree.

That’s in contrast to a national average of a third of Americans with college degrees and only around 13% with postgrad degrees.

Those postgrad numbers are very significant.

MA students make up 17% of student loan borrowers, but 38% of student loan debt.

Graduate degree students borrowed $18,120 in one year compared to $5,460 for undergrads. Loan debt hits stratospheric numbers with professional degrees with medical degree debt at $161,772 and law school debt at $140,616. Much of this was due to a rule allowing unlimited grad student borrowing.

Over a third of Dem primary voters earn over $100,000 a year compared to 9% of Americans.

Democrats student loan bailout proposals are heavily tilted to favor their own primary demographic.

The number of grad students is rising as the number of undergrads is dropping. Two MAs are being awarded for every five BAs backed by unlimited borrowing and out of control tuition increases.

But a White House plan to limit the scale of student borrowing ran into Democrat opposition.

Instead Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders have decided to offer a $1.6 trillion bribe to a minority of Americans, but a majority of Democrat primary voters. Warren and Sanders have repeatedly criticized Wall Street bailouts, but their student loan proposals are even more cynical.

The $1.6 trillion giveaway is not an emergency response to an economic crisis. It’s a bailout of irresponsible behavior by an industry and some of its consumers in order to win the primaries.

Sanders and Warren are trying to bribe their way to the valued second place slot in the 2020 race.

Warren has traditionally polled best among post-grads. She’s trying to appeal to that base to get her further into the race. Bernie Sanders has lagged among the 100k+ voters. His plan has no income tests because he’s trying to improve his standing with a minority of Americans, but a third of primary voters.

They’re both scrambling for the support of the same base of young wealthy postgrads who are extremely politically active in Democrat circles and would love to get a pass on student loans.

And that demographic has already been the beneficiary of unprecedented largess.

Loans have gone from being backed by the government to being made directly by the government. When Obama first won his election, there was $140 billion in federal student debt loans. We’re now at approximately $1.2 trillion in federal loans ever since the government all but took over the business.

Turning taxpayer money into loans for a sizable chunk of the Democrat base has now led to a demand that we take a bath on that trillion plus and then buy up loans from private lenders in the bargain.

This is every bit as bad as the Wall Street bailouts that Warren and Sanders inveigh against. Their proposal is to have Americans bail out the Democrat voters they want to the tune of $1.6 trillion.

Warren and Sanders have claimed that they wanted a college loan bailout for all Americans. Demographically, their bailout is about helping them score a few points in tight primaries by appealing to a minority of Americans, who happen to be key demographics in the primary contests.

The largest concentration of student loan debt is among the under 30 and the 30-39 crowd. As college tuition rates spin out of control, younger students are likely to carry heavier debt than in the past.

This is also a group that is far more likely to vote for Democrats.

In the 2018 midterm elections, the under 30 crowd chose Democrats over Republicans, 67 to 32, and 30-44 voters picked Democrats to Republicans, 58 to 39.

Those also happen to Bernie and Liz’s base. The one they’re cannibalizing our earnings to bribe.

Student loan debt is a bigger problem among women than men and among black people than white people.  Black college grads owe $53,000 in debt, almost twice as much, four years after graduation.

Black voters tend to vote for Democrats by 90 percent or more.

That doesn’t mean that their problems don’t matter. But, conversely, there’s something obscene about Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders offering a $1.6 trillion bailout to their voters.

The American people should not have to pay the tab for a $1.6 trillion primary bribe.

The socialist candidates claim that the money will be paid for by new taxes on the rich. We’ve heard that line before. All their programs are supposed to be paid for that way. In reality, the costs will be passed down to the middle class while the benefits will be reaped by Democrat politicians and their supporters.

We don’t have a cost crisis in higher education. Instead, we have a spending crisis.

Senator Elizabeth Warren ought to know. Harvard paid her $350,000 to teach one class. Senator Bernie Sanders ought to know. His wife got $200,000 in severance from the college she ran into the ground.

Both Warren and Sanders profited from out of control college spending without caring about students.

The student loan crisis was caused by a chain reaction of irresponsible spending by schools, leading to tuition hikes, and student debt spinning out of control until it approaches entirely impossible numbers.

Student loan debt increased from $90 billion in outstanding student loan debt in 1999 to $550 billion in 2011 to $1.3 trillion in 2014 to $1.6 trillion now.

$90 billion to $1.6 trillion in 20 years is a huge leap. But it can be reversed with market signals that make it clear that the era of free money that drove institutional costs and tuition hikes is over. Or we can flush trillions more down the drain while blowing up the educational bubble until it becomes too big to fail.

Another two decades of such increases would lead to a number that would consume our entire GDP.

When that day comes, the real cost won’t be $1.6 trillion. It will be our entire economy.

The answer to the student debt crisis isn’t to feed the beast, but to tell the institutions that have helped run up unfathomable amounts of institutional and student debt to go on a diet before it’s too late.

There have been enough bailouts. It’s time to stop bailing and fix the boat.

Americans can’t afford Bernie and Liz’s $1.6 trillion bribe to their voter base. Nor can we afford the cost of the bubble when it finally bursts.

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