The “debt strike” in respect of student loans is shaping up as one of the most dramatic affronts to the rule of law in years. There is just more than $1.75 trillion in student loans outstanding. The debt is mostly owed to the federal government and guaranteed by the American taxpayer. The Supreme Court tried to block President Biden from a vast forgiveness scheme, but the president is launching a new effort to sneak around the ruling.This looming lawlessness began with Mr. Biden. Prior to the midterms, he put forward the plan, relying on the flimsiest of legal justifications, to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt per borrower. It was as blatant a vote-buying ploy as they come. The Democrats’ left wing averred that even if the Supreme Court rejected the amnesty, Mr. Biden would need to find another way. “Failure isn’t an option,” as one activist, Wisdom Cole, put it. Sure enough, Mr. Biden, urged on by Senators Warren and Sanders, vowed to defy the Supreme Court ruling striking down his scheme. “The fight is not over,” he railed, and subsequently put forward a new legal rationale — a dead letter at the Supreme Court — for another amnesty attempt. Meanwhile a group calling itself a “Gen Z-led nonpartisan organization” denounced the ruling as “an attack on young people,” calling the court “illegal.”That’s the mentality animating the debt strike, which, the Hill reports, is emerging as “many borrowers are preparing to make payments on their student loans when they restart in October,” while strikers “are ignoring their accounts.” The group behind the strike, Debt Collective, says that the goal is “politicizing nonpayment collectively” and that “Instead of doing things as individuals, we are doing them together as a united front.”Debt Collective’s rationale for borrowers to join their “civil disobedience” places Mr. Biden at the root of the debt strike. “I refuse to pay a debt the president promised to cancel,” the group’s website offers as a kind of mantra, adding that “Until the president uses his executive authority to cancel debt, I am going on debt strike.” They contend “the government doesn’t need our money and can easily cancel the debt.”This overlooks the estimated $475 billion price tag of Mr. Biden’s debt forgiveness. That expense would be borne by all taxpayers to subsidize the debts freely incurred by the minority of Americans who pursue higher education. The confusion sown by Mr. Biden is noted by Vox, which observes the White House is “urging people to start paying their loans this fall” while “simultaneously telling millions of borrowers their loans will be entirely forgiven.”This is the context, Vox reports, in which activists, like a former member of Mr. Sanders’ staff, Melissa Byrne, are urging a refusal to repay student loans. “Literally no one pay,” Ms. Byrne avers. The Debt Collective, for its part, says “Student debt strike begins Oct 1.” Such talk raises concerns of a larger breakdown in respect for the law, no doubt fed by the campaign by the liberal press and Democrats to undermine the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.The rhetoric surrounding the debt strike underscores the logic in designating the Democrats’ social welfare programs as “entitlements.” Core electoral constituencies have come to feel they are, indeed, entitled to handouts from Uncle Sam. The idea of having these expectations disappointed is well-nigh unthinkable. Hence the vitriol in response to the Supreme Court ruling — and the growing refusal to abide by it.The moment calls for leadership from the White House, meaning a stern message that any mass refusal to honor student debt obligations will not be tolerated. It’s more likely to be met with equivocation and deflection of blame. Mr. Biden, who laid the foundation for this debt strike by misapplying the United States Code, is hardly in a position to exercise his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
