Biden isn’t serious about forgiving student debt. ‘Means-testing’ is a con

theguardian.com:

During the 2020 Democratic primary, Pete Buttigieg’s personal ambition led him to poison the conversation about education in America. Desperate for a contrast point with his rivals, the son of a private university professor aired ads blasting the idea of tuition-free college because he said it would make higher education “free even for the kids of millionaires.”

The attack line, borrowed from former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was cynicism masquerading as populism. It was an attempt to limit the financial and political benefits of a proposal to make college free. Worse, it was disguised as a brave stand against the oligarchs bankrolling Buttigieg’s campaign, even though it actually wasn’t – almost no rich scions would benefit from free college.

Buttigieg and copycats like Amy Klobuchar were pushing a larger lie. Call it the means-testing con – the idea that social programs should not be universal, and should instead only be available to those who fall below a certain income level. It is a concept eroding national unity and being carried forward by wealthy pundits and a Democratic party that has discarded the lessons of its own universalist triumphs like social security, Medicare and the GI Bill.

This week the Biden administration tore a page from Buttigieg’s book. The White House leaked that it is considering finally following through on Joe Biden’s promise to cancel some student debt – but not the $50,000 pushed by congressional Democrats, and only for those below an income threshold.

In trial-ballooning the college debt relief proposal, the president is boosting the media-manufactured fiction that real, universal college debt relief would mostly help rich Ivy League kids – even though data from the Roosevelt