Judging Freedom - Why the Heck are We Forgiving Student Loans_

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

U.S. forgives 40,000 student loans, provides aid to 3.6 million more #studentloanSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good morning, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, April 20th, 2022. It's about 1045 in the morning here on the East Coast. My apologies for those of you who have been hanging on waiting for us to start at 1030 as advertised. Occasionally we have, you know, technical quirks that we have to work out. You might be happy to know that I'm becoming a little bit more technologically savvy since these days I am my own camera person and my own audio person as well as being your on-air person. All this has been going very well in large measure because of you. We're close to 14,000 subscriptions. I wanted to be at 12,000 by Easter. We broke that nicely. So I hope you'll like and subscribe. If you're watching me now, you probably have already

liked and subscribed. But if you ask your friends and colleagues, they don't have to be libertarians. They can just be people who are interested in a different perspective, a perspective that presumes and argues that the individual is sovereign, not the state, that our liberty comes from within us, and that it's a gift from God. It's not a gift from the state. That the Constitution doesn't grant freedom. The Constitution restrains the government, when it works properly, from interfering with freedom. The Constitution doesn't always work. In my opinion, as a former judge, as a constitutional scholar for 50 years, the Constitution more often does not work than it does work. But if you and your friends and colleagues and relatives and co-workers and neighbors are interested in this attitude about the government in our lives, judging freedom is the place for you. This morning, the President of the United

States will announce that the federal government will forgive the student loans of 3.6 million people who are no longer students. They are now young people. Some of them are even middle-aged, and they won't have to pay back the loans that they took out to go to college and graduate school and professional school. Now, here's how this works. The money to pay the school came from a bank. The student and or the student's parents or both signed notes promising to repay the money. The government guaranteed the loan. So when the bank is told, ah, I'm not going to pay you back, instead of getting a judgment against the student, the bank would get a judgment against the federal government. Rather than getting a judgment against the federal government, the bank has an agreement with the federal government. If the student doesn't pay for whatever reason, we, the federal government, will pay. And then we,

the federal government, will go after the student. So it's sort of circular. Bank lends money to student. Federal government guarantees if student doesn't pay, the federal government will pay, and the federal government will go after the student. So basically, the federal government will pay, and the federal government will go after the students. So basically the federal government will announce later today, doesn't care if you didn't pay, it will pay for you. So nobody's going to come after you. And that debt, which was originally maybe 50,000, is now 125,000. These are hypothetical numbers because of the accumulation of interest, don't worry about it. So where does the federal government get the money from? Well, the federal government is broke.

We know that. So the federal government will go out into the money markets and borrow it. It will sell bonds to raise money to pay back the student debt. How much money? 3.6 million former students owe, you ready for this number? $400 billion. Wiped clean. You are paying for it. Your children are paying for it. Your grandchildren are paying for it. Your great-grandchildren are paying for it. You can just keep adding great, great, great, great, great if you want. Take the example of World War I. Woodrow Wilson,

in my opinion, the second worst president in American history, borrowed $30 billion to fund the useless, illegal, immoral, wasteful World War I. The government is still paying interest on it, has not even retired the $30 billion. It's rolled it over, meaning it has paid back the bondholders, but borrowed money to pay it back. So of that $30 billion, we've paid $15 billion in interest, and we are still paying interest. Only the federal government pays interest at 50% because the debt is more than 100 years old. So that's how debt accumulates. We don't know if all $400 billion will be paid at once or if it will be paid in increments. It depends on how quickly the government can accumulate that money. Now, why is Joe Biden doing this? Because his poll

numbers are down amongst young people. It's reprehensible that the president of the United States has this authority simply to cancel debt. Look, if you're a young person and you borrowed money to go to college and you can't pay it back, you're probably happy. But it's not fair that the rest of us should be saddled with your debt. It's just not fair. You incur a debt, you pay for it, like the rest of us do, rather than leaning on the federal government. Who knows whose debts Joe will forgive next. Someone named Doja Cho, I think I'm pronouncing your name right, says to me that the whole thing is a scam. You're right, Doja Cho, it is. It's just a Federal Reserve note issued by the Federal Reserve, and they can decide tomorrow that it's worthless.

Until Nixon closed the gold window, it was backed by gold. This unraveling of gold backing the dollars began under FDR, a liberal Democrat, and the final nail was driven into the, the final stake was driven into the heart of gold-backed currency by Nixon. It actually began under Lincoln in the Civil War, but in the modern era, FDR and Nixon. So I don't know where this is going to end. Biden thinks he'll be happy. Biden thinks that those of you that owe all this money

will be happy and that you'll vote for the Democrats. I hope you'll vote for the person who will most protect your freedom rather than giving away other people's money. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.