Department chair of political science at Wichita State University doesn't understand basic economics

On March 28, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced his office will be suing Joe Biden over his administration’s student loan forgiveness “scheme.” This is in collaboration with ten other state attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah.

“Once again, the Biden administration has decided to steal from the poor and give to the rich,” Kobach said. “He is forcing people who did not go to college, or who worked their way through college, to pay for the loans of those who ran up exorbitant student debt. This coalition of Republican attorneys general will stand in the gap and stop Biden.”

According to a press release on the issue, “The multistate lawsuit argues that U.S. Department of Education doesn’t have the authority to alter student loan repayment plans, essentially canceling more than $156 million in student loan debt. It also argues that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an earlier version of Biden’s illegal student loan program last summer. The Court ruled that program violated federal law, and that only Congress can authorize the forgiveness of student loans—which requires spending taxpayer money to do so.”

“We intend to win again,” Kobach said. “The law simply does not allow Biden to do what he wants to do. Biden is trying to exercise the powers of a king rather than the powers of a President in a constitutional republic. We look forward to seeing the President’s attorneys in court.”

On April 6, the Topeka Capital-Journal published an opinion piece by Alexandra Middlewood, PhD, who is the department chair of political science at Wichita State University.

In her piece, she admits that Kobach is likely to be successful within her third sentence, claiming “the conservative majority Supreme Court demonstrated a willingness to grant standing to states suing the federal government for harms state agencies could face if student loans were forgiven,” in the 2023 case.

She goes onto state that it’s “questionable” if Kansas has the legal standing for the lawsuit and that, according to the federal government, 1,200 Kansans would be denied “financial relief” if Kobach wins the lawsuit.

“Millennials stand to benefit most from the student loan forgiveness program,” Middlewood writes. “According to TransUnion, Millennials hold 43% of all student loan debt as of 2023.”

Middlewood went on to talk about statistics regarding how Kansas Millennials and Gen Z view the economy worse than any other generation in Kansas, according to the 2023 Kansas Speaks public opinion survey.

She further goes onto state how Millennials have the lowest homeowner rate of any generation and that the “cost of college education has increased over the past several decades.” However, she doesn’t blame the actual reasons for these. In fact, she doesn’t give any reasons for why Millennials are less likely to be homeowners and she blames cutting higher education funding for the increase in tuition costs. She continues to state that “the cost of living has increased exponentially while wages have remained stagnant for college graduates.”

She finishes by stating that Millennials are the largest population cohort of the United States as of 2019, giving them huge influence socially, economically, and politically. Due to this, she believes Kobach “championing a lawsuit that targets Millennials” isn’t smart.

As a younger Millennial—28 years old—who has already paid off all of my student loan debt, I have to say, I don’t think Middlewood’s view is very smart. For one, this lawsuit is not about “targeting Millennials” it’s about protecting responsible people who either paid off their student loans or never went to college in the first place and instead joined the workforce as a valuable member of the economy from being forced by the government to pay the loans of people who borrowed money they are struggling to pay back.

I don’t love everything Kobach does, but as a Millennial, I am grateful that he is going forth with this lawsuit to protect people like me.

Furthermore, student loan forgiveness makes the bad economy even worse. These loans still have to be paid off, but instead of the people responsible for paying them off, the burden gets pushed onto taxpayers through inflation, which is a stealth tax.

As for being the generation that has the lowest homeowner rate, there are more factors at play than student loan debt—the vast majority of reasons being an out of control and tyrannical government pushing bad policies. Co-Owner of Based-Politics Hannah Cox did a deep dive on the housing crisis, finding four reasons people should actually blame for the housing crisis. These reasons include: A housing shortage, building houses has become too expensive, inflation, and the Federal Reserve and government spending. What she has to say is really interesting and I definitely recommend checking the 15-minute video out if you are interested in learning more about that issue.

As for blaming the increasing cost of college on higher education funding being cut by the government, that is a lie that requires you, the reader, to be too ignorant to understand. The reality is that college is so expensive because of the government. Colleges could not be as expensive as they are if it wasn’t for the government subsidizing them. Most people can’t pay $25,000 a year for an education without the government getting involved and leaving them with a debt that they can’t pay off with useless degrees in fields that should not be offered. The price of college would have to go down to meet demand if colleges played in the free market and had to offer degrees that were competitive in the market in order to stay open. Until we get the government out of colleges, the price will continue to go up and fewer and fewer people will get a quality education.