Washington Watch

Biden: If Congress ends student loan pause, I’ll veto

Some 87% of Americans never took out student loans, committee report finds

The White House says that if Congress passes House Joint Resolution 45, which would terminate President Joe Biden’s student loan pause and prevent a similar rule from being issued, Biden will veto it.

Last week, the U.S. House approved the bill 218-203, with 14 lawmakers not voting.

Read it for yourself: House Joint Resolution 45 of 2023

Congress.gov reports that the bill was received in the Senate Tuesday. USA Today reported Wednesday that it will get a full Senate vote. Republicans control the House and Democrats control the Senate.

But even if the bill passes in identical forms in both houses and heads to Biden’s desk, the president has vowed a veto.

“This resolution is an unprecedented attempt to undercut our historic economic recovery and would deprive more than 40 million hard-working Americans of much-needed student debt relief,” reads a statement from the White House. It goes on to say the resolution “would weaken America’s middle class.”

The House Education Committee disagrees, noting that 87% of Americans never took out student loans.

Per the conclusion of the majority report:

President Biden’s student loan scam is illegal, unfair, and immoral. There is no such thing as debt ‘forgiveness.’ President Biden is simply transferring the debt from borrowers who willingly took out student loans to hardworking taxpayers who did not. This is no insignificant portion of the population: in fact, eighty-seven percent of Americans did not take out loans. This number includes those who did not go to college, who worked to avoid loans, or who had the grit to pay their loans back. In total, the President’s illegal student loan schemes could cost taxpayers nearly $1 trillion dollars...

The Mackinac Center has sued the U.S. Department of Education over the student loan pause.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

News Story

Whitmer makes untrue claims about Michigan’s job recovery

Whitmer says unemployment level is lowest since the ‘70s: It isn’t

Michigan’s “unemployment is down to 3.8%, comparable to the lowest levels since the 1970s,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer tweeted May 23.

The governor’s claim was accompanied by a meme from the movie “Mean Girls,” continuing, “We’re investing in good-paying jobs and putting more money in people’s pockets.”

Whitmer, however, fought a recent tax cut set forth by a previous legislative term.

Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that Michigan’s lowest unemployment rate since the 1970s is 3.2%, which occured in February 2000, according to James Hohman, the Mackinac Center’s director of fiscal policy.

Michigan’s current unemployment rate is just a little more than where the state was before the pandemic at 3.7%.

More than three years have passed since Whitmer exercised unlawful unilateral emergency powers to shut down businesses, and the state has still not recovered.

“Michigan’s economy is falling behind the growth of other states and the governor’s policies have only made it worse,” said Hohman.

While Michigan has struggled with a weak economic recovery and high inflation, Whitmer fought to prevent an automatic tax rollback that would have put more money in people’s pockets.

The labor force participation rate, defined as those within a population who are working or looking for work, was 60.2% in April, down more than a percentage point from 61.3% in February 2020, the month before the pandemic emergency was declared.

Michigan’s employment growth is the eighth-weakest in the nation, and it has the tenth-weakest labor force participation. Thirty other states have fully recovered. Michigan is lagging, not leading, in economic growth.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.