Fleeting presidency, lasting debt: Joe Biden’s real legacy



Joe Biden’s parting gift to student loan borrowers aligns neatly with his massive deficits. Over and over, spending leads to rising deficits. Among Biden’s many failures, none is more quantifiable than his budgeting — or lack thereof.

“I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” Biden declared recently, announcing another student loan cancellation for more than 150,000 individuals at an estimated cost of $4.2 billion.

For a one-term administration grasping for a legacy, it need only look at its spending, deficits, and immense debt.

That announcement coincided with two reports from the Congressional Budget Office. In comparing actual results to its projections, the CBO noted that fiscal year 2024 recorded a $1.8 trillion deficit — 6.4% of gross domestic product, up from 6.2% the previous year. This marks the deficit’s third consecutive increase and a level exceeded only six times since 1946. Meanwhile, federal spending reached $6.8 trillion (23.4% of GDP), surpassing its 50-year average by 11%. As a result, federal debt rose to 97.8% of GDP.

The CBO also reported that in the first quarter of fiscal 2025, the government ran a $710 billion deficit — $200 billion higher than the same period in fiscal 2024. Spending increased $175 billion (11%) over last year’s pace.

The connection, of course, is that Biden’s latest student loan forgiveness just piles more deficits and debt onto these and shifts both onto general taxpayers. It is also a microcosm of what Biden has done throughout his four years.

From fiscal years 2021 to 2024, federal spending exceeded the pre-COVID fiscal 2019 baseline by $8.2 trillion, generating $7.7 trillion in deficits. Nearly all of that came under Biden’s watch. Although the first quarter of fiscal 2021 occurred under Trump amid the 2020 pandemic, the newly reported first-quarter totals for fiscal 2025 already surpass that.

For four years, Biden has spent and spent, run staggering deficits, and racked up massive new debt. Amazingly, in the face of this dismal performance, Biden wanted more.

Lest we forget these astronomical figures’ toll, look no farther than to the inflation they helped fuel as they pushed trillions through the pipeline.

The January 15 CPI data release showed a 12-month inflation rate of 2.9% and a core rate (excluding food and energy) of 3.2%. Both rates remain above the Federal Reserve’s desired 2% target.

The only positive news was that both figures fell below the pessimistic inflation assumptions associated with Biden’s presidency. Since Biden took office, inflation has run hot, scorching American consumers. When he began his term in January 2021, the annual CPI increase was 1.4%. By March 2021, it had climbed to 2.6%, eventually peaking at a 40-year high of 9.1% in June 2022. Apart from Biden’s first full month in office, the inflation rate has never approached its level when he was inaugurated.

For Biden apologists baffled by the administration’s defeat in November, note the president’s 34.5% approval rating on inflation. The people did not believe the Biden-Harris hype.

Biden’s record shows unrestrained spending, yet he still wanted more. Only two senators from his own party — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — kept him from securing additional funds when Democrats held the White House and both houses of Congress. Ultimately, he had to “settle” for hundreds of billions less.

He also pushed for even broader student debt cancellation. He adopted a piecemeal strategy only because he could not accomplish a total wipeout. Two Supreme Court rulings, in June and August 2023, thwarted his plans. Undeterred, Biden has sought new ways to shift student debt to federal debt by revising programs that predate his administration.

Biden appeared willing to spend any amount, run any deficit, and accumulate any level of debt. Yet even in the waning days of his term, Biden’s administration scrambled to send as much money out the White House door as possible. His time simply ran out.

For a one-term administration grasping for a legacy, it need only look at its spending, deficits, and immense debt. Unfortunately for American taxpayers, that may prove to be Joe Biden’s longest-lasting impact.

Abolishing the Department of Education is not the answer



In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election victory, many education reformers are saying that now is the time to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the presumptive leaders of the new Department of Government Efficiency, have been strongly hinting that eradicating the DOE outright is a real possibility.

That’s an attractive goal — the DOE wastes a great deal of money and does a great deal of damage to American students. But eliminating it outright will be difficult. Education reformers need 60 votes in the Senate to abolish the Department of Education. Using budget reconciliation might allow that requirement to be sidestepped, but it’s doubtful that Congress will go along with that tactic. Additionally, the Trump voting coalition isn’t just made up of small-government conservatives — it includes voters who don’t mind big government so long as it isn’t woke.

The way to achieve swift and substantial education reform is thoughtful, detailed work to simplify and reduce the Education Department.

Also, “abolishing the Education Department” can mean less than meets the eye. Every single office and program can be transferred over to the Department of Health and Human Services — uncut, unreformed, and unchanged. Putative reformers could declare a hollow victory while supporters of the radical education establishment would then happily perform their outrage dance, secure in the knowledge that nothing really has changed.

To get real reform, we reformers should instead perform radical surgery on the DOE. We should eliminate spending on dozens of useless or counterproductive small programs — and preserve in as simple a form as possible the big-ticket items that command massive popular support, including within the Trump coalition. We also should chop the Office for Civil Rights down to size so it can’t use “Dear Colleague letters” and case resolutions to play the enforcing thugs for America’s radical race and sex fanatics. When we’ve done this, we can establish real accountability over the Department of Education’s core functions and then determine whether further reform is necessary.

The DOE mostly spends its money on Title I funds for disadvantaged K-12 students ($18 billion a year); special education funds for physically and mentally handicapped students ($14 billion a year); Pell Grants for disadvantaged postsecondary students ($29 billion a year); and direct student loans to postsecondary students ($106 billion a year). The Department of Education should say explicitly that it will preserve these four core functions — although with a gimlet eye toward eliminating waste, fraud, bureaucratic bloat, and grifters who cry poverty or handicap to grab a slice of federal money.

These four core functions also should be radically simplified.

  • The four formula grants for Title I funds should be amalgamated into one formula grant, as close as possible in form either to a no-strings block grant to the states or portable aid given to individual families.
  • The Rehabilitation Services Administration ($4.4 billion a year, which is nearly a third of the special education budget) should be moved to HHS. Congress should revise the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act so it doesn’t impose on states or school districts unfunded, undefined mandates for special education spending.
  • Every remaining college grant program should be amalgamated into Pell Grants; special programs such as college aid for veterans should be relocated to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
  • All college loan programs should be merged into the Federal Direct Student Loan Program. Ironclad congressional statutes should be passed to make it impossible for a future administration to repeat the Biden administration’s illegal “loan forgiveness.”

In addition, the OCR should be reduced from 633 employees to no more than 175, so that their ratio to the population they serve is at most in proportion to that of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. The OCR then should be incorporated into Justice and its enforcement powers constrained to litigation, with no ability to issue “Dear Colleague letters” or conduct case resolutions.

For now, the Department of Education should keep a few programs, such as those that support charter schools, gifted education, English language acquisition, historically black colleges and universities (for which the U.S. has historical commitments that can be honored by institutional support without resorting to discrimination among citizens), and state assessments. These are good goals, and though these aren’t core functions, the DOE could be reformed to support them properly.

Everything else should go at once — the discretionary grant programs, the race discrimination programs that seek “equity,” the miniature welfare states disguised as education programs, the political propaganda camouflaged as “social and emotional learning” and “mental health.” Some of these programs should be relocated to better homes, such as the State Department (international education; money for Pacific Island nations); the Interior Department (Indian education); the Defense Department (foreign language programs); the Justice Department (prison education); the Labor Department (vocational education); or the National Endowment for the Arts (arts education). Every office or program that discriminates among American citizens, such as the Hispanic-Serving Institutions Division, should be eliminated immediately.

The OCR also should formally rescind every legal reinterpretation that:

  • justifies quotas;
  • uses disparate impact theory;
  • redefines sex to include gender, gender identity, or gender expression;
  • redefines sex discrimination to include sexual harassment and sexual violence;
  • and abridges due process and First Amendment rights within educational institutions.

The OCR also should rescind every policy, requirement, document, case resolution, and investigation that draws upon these legal reinterpretations and state as an explicit principle that the Department of Education requires every educational institution that receives federal money to champion due process and the First Amendment — period. Oh, and any education institution that tolerates or facilitates Jew-hating intimidation by campus mobs will get its money cut off at once.

When the Department of Education has been reduced to four key functions and is largely shorn of all discretionary grant programs, policymakers and the public can then begin to demand true accountability regarding its remaining functions. They can achieve that by:

  • creating efficiency measures in every office, which gage how well the ED’s own bureaucrats perform;
  • creating return-on-investment measures for every DOE program, which estimate how much educational improvement the taxpayer gets;
  • and eliminating fake accountability measures such as: 1) money disbursed without measuring whether it was worthwhile; 2) student achievement scores without investigating their connection to federal dollars spent; 3) numbers of teachers trained without any sense of whether it helps student achievement; or 4) “qualitative” measures of success that are just an academic way of saying, “My gut tells me this was a pretty good way to spend your money.”

If all these reforms are carried out, education reformers will be in a better position to make a simple and clear case to the public that the remaining core functions of the Department of Education should be relocated, reformed, or ended. Or they may decide that a slimmed-down DOE does, in fact, serve the public good. In either case, the practicable way to achieve swift and substantial education reform is thoughtful, detailed work to simplify and reduce the DOE. Do that first, and then consider whether it should be eliminated.

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.

Biden Gives Last-Minute Student Loan Handout as He Abandons Broader Initiative

As his presidency nears its end, Joe Biden is abandoning his embattled plan to cancel student loans for over 38 million Americans, the Associated Press reported. 

The post Biden Gives Last-Minute Student Loan Handout as He Abandons Broader Initiative appeared first on .

Ivy League Faculties Fail The ‘Sodom And Gomorrah’ Test Of Having 10 Righteous Inhabitants

New universities will arise, and others that can meet the Sodom and Gomorrah test will reform themselves to offer an intellectually diverse and ideologically balanced education.

Anti-Semitism, DEI, and Skyrocketing Costs: The Challenges Facing Incoming Education Secretary Linda McMahon

Over the past four years, colleges and universities have violated the civil rights of Jewish students. Transgender ideology has proliferated, threatening women's sports. And diversity, equity, and inclusion have increasingly trumped merit in the hiring and accreditation processes.

The post Anti-Semitism, DEI, and Skyrocketing Costs: The Challenges Facing Incoming Education Secretary Linda McMahon  appeared first on .

Cowboys, Billionaires, And Pastors Break Tough Ground To Build Great Books Colleges

Parents, teachers, philanthropists, and students aren’t waiting for American higher education to fix itself. They’re pioneering new colleges and universities now.

Here’s How To Actually Reverse The Baby Bust

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How to make American education great again



Imagine these words as the first speech delivered by Donald Trump’s incoming secretary of education.

Today, I am here to deliver bitter medicine: American education has failed. Teachers and parents, administrators and government — and even students — all bear some responsibility.

Just as Sputnik spurred the urgency that sent Americans to the moon, we need a bold initiative to revolutionize education.

The most common explanations for our educational crisis are inadequate funding, overuse of standardized testing, and systemic prejudice. They are false.

Our schools do not lack funding. No country spends more on public education.

The poor results of standardized tests indicate our failures; they are not the cause.

Our schools are not prejudiced. The most aggressive education reforms since 1955 directly aimed to eliminate systemic discrimination.

The diagnosis

For decades, we ignored signs of trouble, but the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the depth of our challenges. The problems are so pervasive and complex that there is no quick fix. We cannot merely repair; we must rebuild.

Since 2020, American families have struggled mightily. The declining quality of education prompted affluent families to opt out of public schools, leaving middle- and working-class families with diminished resources and influence to push for reform. States' refusal to enact school choice reforms widened the wealth gap and limited generational mobility.

But lower- and middle-class families bear some responsibility, too. The rise of single-parent households, less common among affluent families, has been catastrophic. When the only adult in the home works up to 60 hours a week to make ends meet, there is little time for homework help, PTA meetings, or engaging with school officials. Even in households with two working parents, time and energy are often in short supply.

Teachers, for their part, have good reason to despair. Despite the monumental importance of their work, many are underpaid. They face administrators who value standardized test scores above all else.

Meanwhile, declining standards for decorum and discipline, often justified in the name of “social justice,” have made schools unsafe for both teachers and students.

Violence and insubordination create an environment unfit for serious learning. Some parents treat schools as day-care centers or demand good grades for minimal effort. Worse, parents of disruptive students often refuse to ensure that their children do not rob others of the opportunity to learn.

Yet teachers, too, have failed. They inflate grades to keep their jobs but do no favors for students unprepared for future challenges. This, in turn, lowers the quality of education for students ready for more advanced work, driving gifted students out of public schools.

Another harsh truth is that many teachers are unprepared for the job. The education system has failed for so long that many teachers have never mastered the material they are supposed to teach. Colleges steer future educators toward education majors, where coursework focuses more on leftist “social justice” ideology than on subject mastery. Some graduates believe their mission is to “dismantle” an “unjust” society by creating anti-American activists.

When these activist teachers enter classrooms, they often abandon their duty to transmit America’s culture, knowledge, and values. Instead, they teach students to disdain their nation, its people, its past, and its way of life. This undermines social cohesion and deprives disadvantaged students of the tools they need to succeed.

Outdated curricula exacerbate these issues. Most schools still use models from the late 20th century, failing to address how computing, the internet, and artificial intelligence have transformed how we read, write, and learn. Even in innovative schools, teachers often struggle to balance the needs of non-native, non-English speakers with those of native English speakers, diluting the educational experience for the latter.

Our colleges and universities are also broken. Admitting underprepared students has lowered academic standards nationwide. General education curricula often assume a need for remediation, leaving motivated students without the challenge or preparation they deserve.

Government-run financial aid has inflated tuition costs while diminishing the value of college degrees. Proposals to cancel student debt signal to universities that they can continue raising prices without consequence, encouraging predatory admission policies that saddle students with unmanageable debt.

The prescription

How do we revitalize American education? Nothing short of an academic Sputnik will suffice. Just as Sputnik spurred the urgency that sent Americans to the moon, we need a bold initiative to revolutionize education.

  • We will create K-12 curricula prioritizing history, civics, and an understanding of our government.
  • We will eliminate curricula that divide Americans by race, class, religion, sex, or sexual identity.
  • We will implement school choice nationwide.
  • We will end federal student loan programs, allowing private lenders to evaluate borrowers' ability to repay. Conditional lending will force colleges to lower tuition and revise admissions and program offerings.
  • We will expand vocational training and enhance opportunities for gifted students.
  • We will raise teacher credentialing standards to ensure advanced subject knowledge.
  • We will enforce decorum and discipline in schools. Uniforms will unify student bodies, and measures like suspension and expulsion will ensure that classrooms are conducive to learning.
  • We will revise college accreditation standards to reflect post-graduation success and employment metrics.
  • We will penalize public colleges and universities that engage in discriminatory admissions practices.

And that is just the beginning.

The destiny of our nation depends on education. The effort to revitalize our schools must be as bold as our aspirations. Together, we will bring American education into the 21st century. Together, we will make American education great again.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearEducation and made available via RealClearWire.

Kamala Harris hemorrhaging support among young men — and Planned Parenthood's deleted meme hints at why



Democrats are panicking over recent polling data indicating Kamala Harris is not only deeply unpopular with American men, broadly speaking, but increasingly with young male voters.

The Harris boosters at Planned Parenthood Action recently posted then quickly deleted a meme that unintentionally illustrated the alienating approach that might be causing Democrats' retention problems with young men.

The PPA posted the "Girl Explaining" meme, which features a disheveled young woman with an exposed midriff yelling into the face of an exhausted and ostensibly apathetic young man at a concert.

The misleading caption for the post was:

PROJECT 2025 IS A COMPLETE POLITICAL TAKEOVER OF OUR RIGHTS. THEY WANT DONALD TRUMP AND JD VANCE TO WIN SO THEY CAN BAN ABORTION NATIONWIDE. THAT'S WHY WE NEED TO VOTE FOR KAMALA HARRIS AND TIM WALZ, TWO POLITICIANS WHO HAVE SPENT THEIR CAREERS FIGHTING FOR REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS.

Contrary to the suggestion of the pro-abortion outfit, Trump has disavowed Project 2025 and has repeatedly underscored that he would not support a nationwide abortion ban.

'They accidentally depicted the real state of politics in 2024.'

The desperate regurgitation of these falsehoods was not, however, the most telling part of the now-deleted post. Instead, Planned Parenthood appears to have shared a meme hinting at the obliviousness of the left to the numbing affect of its hectoring of young men.

While numerous critics responded by noting the "left can't meme," a co-host from "The Right Thoughts" podcast, who goes by Enguerrand VII de Coucy on X, wrote, "It's hilarious that Planned Parenthood misunderstood this meme format to such a catastrophic degree that they accidentally depicted the real state of politics in 2024, the poor unhappy boy being shrieked at by a woke girl."

Democrats' pro-abortion, anti-Western messaging and accompanying critiques of tradition, normalcy, and masculinity — both shrieked and calmly communicated — are clearly not resonating with a great many young men.

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, recently indicated that there has been a profound shift on campuses, reported Vanity Fair.

'If Donald Trump wins, this is how he wins.'

"I've been doing this for 12 years. This is not normal. The energy is off the charts. You have a younger generation, Gen Z, who experienced a lot of — they would say — lies and deceit during COVID, and a lot of their life being altered," said Kirk. "There is this pent up 'rebellion energy' that has never come out."

Kirk noted further that young men

are profoundly more conservative than people would have expected and, in fact, are the most conservative generation of young men in 50 years. They want to be part of a political movement that doesn’t hate them. Those are their words, not mine. The cultural blob of all left-wing influence has definitely had an undertone that if you’re a straight, white, Christian male, that there’s something wrong with you. Or you must apologize. Or you're a colonizer.

The Guardian reported that in 2016, 51% of young men identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party. That plummeted to 39% in 2023, and now the majority of young men want to see Republicans elected.

The leftist think tank Data for Progress noted in a report Tuesday "a significant gender divide exists among young voters, with young men showing more conservative tendencies than young women." According to Data for Progress, young men are evenly split between Harris and Trump.

Citing the apparent expertise of John Della Volpe, Vanity Fair indicated that Democrats win when they secure 60% of the youth vote — but this is far from guaranteed. While Harris has reportedly won over young women like that represented in the meme by 67% to 28%, Trump is winning Gen Z men by 58% to 37%.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the growing gender gap extends to various issues, including two issues Democrats discuss ad nauseam on the campaign trail: abortion and student debt. Neither of these issues animate or mobilize male voters anywhere as much as their female counterparts and for good reason.

Young men have increasingly been steered out of colleges — adding to their disenchantment with leftist diversity initiatives — such that women now account for 60% of all college students and carry the super-majority of student-loan debt.

Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, told the Guardian that in 2022, 49% of Gen Z men said that the U.S. had become "too soft and feminine." Last year, she said that 60% of the cohort said the same.

Blaze News previously highlighted Democratic strategist James Carville's thoughts on what might be driving this trend.

"If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election," Carville told the New York Times earlier this year. "I'm like: 'Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?'"

As if anticipating Planned Parenthood's meme, Carville added, "A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females."

"'Don't drink beer. Don't watch football. Don't eat hamburgers. This is not good for you,'" continued Carville. "The message is too feminine: 'Everything you're doing is destroying the planet. You've got to eat your peas.'"

Democrats' alienation of young men could preclude them from keeping the White House.

"It's extremely serious," Mike Madrid, a nominally Republican strategist who co-founded the pro-Harris Lincoln Project, told The Hill. "If Donald Trump wins, this is how he wins."

"This is part of a broader dynamic, a bigger trend that we've noticed and we've been watching for a longer time than both candidates have been on the national scene," added Madrid.

Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist involved with "White Dudes for Harris," told The Hill, "There is an ongoing fight about masculinity in America today and the future of masculinity and I think Democrats as a whole have not done a great job of engaging in that fight and I think we need to do a better job of elevating voices that can go have those tough conversations in spaces where those people are."

In the final stretch before Election Day, the Harris campaign is reportedly making one final appeal to young men with ads on Yahoo Sports, sport betting platforms, and on gaming sites. Time will tell whether this was a more effective strategy than spending weeks accusing young men who don't like Harris of misogyny.

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Report: After 6 Years Of Measly ‘Payments,’ Most Student Loan Borrowers Owe More Than When They Started

It’s long past time for taxpayers to stop subsidizing woke indoctrination that doesn’t make students smarter — or richer.