Living the Luxe Life

I am so old, I can remember when “public servants” used to earn less money than they could have expected in the private sector. But those days are long gone. Now, government employees have the rest of us by the throat. Our tax dollars are enriching them, on the average, far beyond what they could earn anywhere else.

This is from Stephen Moore’s Committee to Unleash Prosperity:

The average cost for a government employee in December was $60 per hour, or 40.5% more than his or her private sector counterpart.

Benefits to government employees cost 80.3% more.

This chart shows the numbers:

I would think that if we looked at federal employees, the discrepancy would be even greater. And government employees pretty much can’t be fired, either, so they have these sweet gigs forever.

One interpretation of these numbers is that the rest of us are just serfs on the government’s plantation.

Can we be saved from SAVE?

The Biden administration has fashioned another program of student debt relief forgiveness. The so-called SAVE plan was promulgated by regulation last year. It takes the load off the fanny of beneficiaries of certain federal college loan programs and puts it right on the back of taxpayers. Politico reports that Biden is emailing 153,000 student loan borrowers that he’s canceling their debt. “I hope this relief gives you a little more breathing room,” the message says.

Those of us who actually pay taxes could use a little breathing room, but there is no breathing room to be found. Suffocation is the order of the day.

President Biden is himself a suffocating demagogue, as in his victory lap in the video below (White House transcript here). We thought the Supreme Court had spared us this particular outrage by its decision last year in Biden v. Nebraska. Apparently the justices needn’t have bothered themselves.

Biden declares that he has discovered a workaround. To the extent that one can understand what he’s saying in the clip below, he strikes a defiant note. He’s unafraid of consequences. He’s daring someone to stop him.

Biden on student loan cancellation: “The Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn't stop me." pic.twitter.com/ZomPnhTU1k

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 22, 2024

NRO’s James Lynch has a good story on Biden’s announcement in “Biden Administration Wiping Out another $1.2 Billion in Student-Loan Debt.” Matt Continetti adds up the damage:

On February 21, Biden announced that he was canceling $1.2 billion in federal student loans for 153,000 borrowers. That’s on top of more than $130 billion in student debt that he has canceled to date. The Penn Wharton school says that Biden’s efforts will cost a total of $475 billion over 10 years.

NRO’s Charlie Cooke has posted a cry from the heart expressing his indignation over the unfairness of Biden’s action. In his concluding paragraph, he seems unfairly to blame House Republicans. According to Politico, however, the House actually voted to kill SAVE this past December, but the Senate saved it. Now what?

The regulatory background to the current monstrosity is set forth by Jill Desjean in “ED Releases Final Rule on Latest Income-Driven Repayment Plan.” The final regulation was announced in the Federal Register here last year.

In light of the Supreme Court decision in Biden v. Nebraska, the regulation purports to find authority for the regulation under section 455 of the Higher Education Act than under the HEROES Act. See the “Legal Authority” section of the Federal Register announcement linked above.

What we have here is a monstrosity. James Bovard has an entertaining New York Post column satirizing it, but Bovard has no proposal to kill it. The current monstrosity comes to life this coming July 1. What we need to kill it is a new president to rein in the Education Department, or Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, or some serious legal analysis on which to premise a challenge to the madness of King Joe.