Are these Republicans really hypocrites?

[theking]

Are Republicans who got pandemic debt relief hypocrites for complaining about student debt relief? Yes

You may have noticed over the last few days that the political world is in an uproar over President Biden's dispensing of student debt relief.

It's not so much that Biden implemented the relief program at all; what got politicians and pundits in a tizzy was that he called out the GOP naysayers in the House by pointing out that many of them had received business loans via the pandemic-era Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, that had never been paid back.

The White House tweeted out the forgiven PPP balances of 13 GOP House members critical of student loan relief, under the heading, "This you?"

The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy,. Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., recipient of $616,241 in pandemic relief

That's a really unfair comparison, the argument goes, because the PPP loans were never intended to be paid back. Under the program terms, the loans would be forgiven if the money was used to support the workers of a small business that had been forced to close or curtail operations because of pandemic restrictions.

In other words, it's said, the PPP money was never expected to be repaid. By contrast, student loans were taken out in full expectation that they would be repaid — if not for the handouts being distributed by the White House.

"The PPP helped people remain employed while the government literally shut down much of the economy," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), tweeted back in 2022, the first time Biden made this purportedly invidious comparison. "Only an intellectual clown would compare that to what Biden is doing now with student loans."

Norman received $616,241 from the PPP, according to the White House.

There's something to be said for the distinction made by the PPP-pocketing student relief critics, but not nearly as much as they claim. More on that in a moment.

This is just another example of how our political press is incapable of telling the forest from the trees, or how it's perennially distracted by a shiny object. (Insert your own pertinent metaphor here.)

In this case, the shiny object is the idea that it's Biden who is the hypocrite for comparing the PPP loans to student debt. This misses the bigger picture of how America's economy is structured to benefit corporations and the wealthy — that is, the patrons of the Republican political establishment — at the expense of average Americans. The pundits who are flaying the White House for making the connection are merely buying a GOP talking point.

Not only right-leaning commentators are committing this error. Not a few progressive-minded writers are complicit. Here, for instance, is Jordan Weissmann of Semaphor, usually a percipient analyst of economics and finance: "The thing about this talking point is that I know everybody in the White House, including the [communications] shop, is smart enough to know how disingenuous it is."

Read more: Column: Bidenomics has been a boon for working-class voters. Why don't they give him credit?

Let's take a closer — and a broader — look.

The comparison between student debt relief and the PPP loans first emerged in 2022, when Biden first announced his plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student debt for households with incomes of up to $125,000. The White House then issued a series of tweets targeting GOP critics of student debt relief whose PPP loans had been forgiven.

The Supreme Court invalidated Biden's original proposal in 2023. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 6-3 conservative majority that although the law gave the secretary of education the authority to "waive or modify" the terms of student loans, the White House had gone too far.

After that, the administration implemented a new program, the SAVE plan, that limited monthly repayments on student debt for most borrowers to as little as 5% of their income and ended payments for borrowers living near or below the federal poverty standard. After as little as 10 years, the balance on loans originally totaling $12,000 or less will be permanently forgiven.