Student Debt Forgiveness May Be a Deciding Election Issue

The idea that the federal government would forgive tens of thousands of dollars of student college debt that was crippling college graduates – especially with advanced degrees – from vital life choices like marriage, buying a home and moving to a rural area where salaries (and hectic schedules) were lower -- was a fervent election campaign promise by Democrats in 2020. But even President Biden wasn’t sure he could grant debt forgiveness when the proposals were excluded in multi-trillion dollar pandemic aid bills. Suddenly on August 24, 2022 - the day the pandemic student loan payment relief program was to end - President Biden announced a plan (in an administrative order) that would “provide families breathing room as they prepare to start re-paying loans after the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.” How much a student debtor would be forgiven would depend on their loan totals, their degree types and their future prospective income. In general, the new program would forgive up to $10,000 in federal loans for all borrowers with annual incomes of less than $125,000 (and up to $250,000 for married couples); it would forgive up to $20,000 in loans for students who attended college with Pell grants. It would also lower the cap (from 10 percent to five percent) on income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.

But even though it is an executive order and does not have to go through the Congressional legislative process, the forgiveness program faces several legal and political obstacles and may never be implemented. It could be declared unconstitutional because the President may not have the authority to make this ruling as an emergency measure, given that even he has  declared to CNN on September 21 that the COVID Pandemic is over. There are also disagreements, even among Democrats, regarding whether the ruling is regressive (i.e., favors the wealthy) or progressive (favors the poor). Inevitably, the program will be seen as unfair by the side that is not favored, as well as by almost everyone who put their personal lives on hold in order to pay off their debts as was required, and as they had knowingly agreed to do.

The bottom line, writes Brookings Institute education scholar Douglas N Harris, is that student loan forgiveness is becoming a contentious midterm election problem for Democrats. While it fires up the young Democratic college base, there is no getting around the fact that the forgiveness program establishes a new multi-billion-dollar federal grant program to be paid by taxpayers - something most conservatives, blue dog Democrats and libertarians are loathe to support.

Are Hispanic Voters Empowered by States Rights Issues?

It’s getting confusing. It seems that in almost every top national election issue this year, states are usurping federal laws. Issues include education, responses to COVID, gas prices, return to work requirements, punishment (or not) of lawbreakers, access to guns, abortion, parent-free child gender identity issues, and especially immigration. Hispanic heritage voters are concerned about all and tend to lean conservative on most of these top election concerns. Does that empower Hispanic voters in states with large populations of heritage citizens?

Take education, for instance. Although the constitution upholds the separation of church and state, the 14th amendment requires equal treatment regardless of race, creed, religion or national origin. Hence the demand for equal federal and state public funding for all schools, regardless of whether they are faith-based (such as Catholic schools), private or public charters, is growing in many states. This is an important issue for many Hispanic voters.

Immigration and border control issues – undisputed, constitutionally mandated areas under federal jurisdiction – have also become subject to state actions. Over the past nine months, a widely predicted, historic surge of  over 2 million migrants have crossed the U.S. border from Mexico without authorization and permits. Congress and the Executive branch have done nothing to stop or limit the unprecedented flow. Border agents are not allowed to turn them back. One illegal border crosser told me in an exclusive interview in Spanish (in July in Washington DC), that they were  “automáticamente” given application forms for asylum and are “free to go anywhere they want” under a “discretionary parole” authorization from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. According to my sources, this summer, governors of Texas, Arizona and Florida began using state money to bus over 10,000 migrants who volunteered to go to self-designated sanctuary cities such as D.C., New York, Chicago and even Martha’s  Vineyard, a wealthy vacation home island in Massachusetts. Is that legal? Sanctuary cities vociferously refuse to enforce immigration laws; their goal is to protect all immigrants (legal and illegal) from removal. States who are bussing migrants to other states are protecting their border towns from being overwhelmed by the needs of tens of thousands of illegal border crossers.

“When Congress doesn’t act, then we act,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong told immigration law experts in D.C. on Sept. 22. States, of course, have the inherent right to make their own state laws that affect all their residents, including legal and illegal immigrant. State laws differ widely on, for instance, who can get in-state college tuition, driver’s and business licenses, transgender rights and the like. Although these laws impact immigrants, they are not immigration laws.

This midterm election is considered to be crucial because control of the Congress and  Senate for the next two years before the presidential election of 2024, depends on the outcome of just a few states’ elections. Senate control could come down to which candidates win in Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The first two states have large Hispanic heritage populations. If even five-to-ten percent of the Hispanic electorate votes Republican instead of Democrat, it could change the results. In this election, where Hispanics live may be a deciding factor.

Surging Illegal Border Crossings Seen as a Bipartisan Opportunity

There was an almost shock-gasp reaction to the conclusions of two liberals and a conservative on a panel on “The State of Play for Immigration Legislation” at the annual “Immigration and Law” conference organized by the Migration Policy Institute at Georgetown Law School. Amazingly, the panelists agreed that the border crisis, which  has been denied so far by the Biden administration, and the “stunt” by Republican governors to bus illegal border crossers to liberal sanctuary cities and states, have created a firestorm focus on immigration as an explosive election issue. Shockingly, the panelists concluded that this firestorm represents an opportunity for legislative compromise in the near future. Like the limited gun control bill passed into law this summer after horrendous school shootings, the unprecedented illegal border crossings and bussing have created a viral issue that both parties need to be seen as working to resolve.