“Forgive” Does Not Mean “Forget”

I grew up the product of a mixed marriage. No, not ethnically or religiously, but rather politically.

My father at the time of my youth was a staunch Goldwater Republican, while my mother was “All the Way with LBJ.” The old man has since mellowed a bit, but my mother with the curious exceptions of being a fan of GOP lifer Pat Buchanan as well as anti-immigration, has steadfastly clung to her Democratic roots.

In full disclosure, I have tended to lean more toward my father’s beliefs as opposed to my mother’s especially during Presidential and Gubernatorial elections. The opposite has been true however in local and county races.

But on to today’s missive.

One of the many issues that has surfaced during the initial round of debates among the expansive field of Democratic candidates for the Oval Office is the obscene costs of a college education and the subsequent $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.

Two of the candidates, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have posited the absurd solution of canceling all student debt – yep, all of it.

To put that $1.6 trillion figure in perspective, that’s more than the gross national product of England, France or Italy.

I use the term “absurd” because in light of the massive federal deficit does anyone think that the government is just going to say, “hey, no problem, our treat” and pick up the tab? Sorry, someone owns those loans – many of them securitized through private lending institutions - and surprise, those investors are going to want to be compensated for canceling them. And when Warren, Sanders and others infer the government will pay for it, that’s Beltway-speak for “taxpayers,” and that means you and me.

What both candidates either overlooked or refuse to acknowledge is that for every voter enamored with the idea of student loan forgiveness, there will be three or four (like myself) furious that they paid off - or are paying off their loan obligations diligently -  or had to choose a less expensive institution for their children to attend rather than be saddled with loan repayments in five or even six figures.

When you hear a candidate – from either side of the aisle – use the term “forgive” when referring to a national monetary crisis, it inevitably turns out to be an expensive proposition.

For anyone with a fuzzy recollection of that politically charged verb just harken back to the Savings & Loan failures of the 1980s and 1990s. And the price tag to taxpayers for that debacle was roughly 1/10^th the amount floating in current student loan debt.

No voter is likely to “forgive and forget” any repeat of that.