来源：《华盛顿邮报》
原文刊登日期：2023年6月30日
In August 2022, the Biden administration decreed $379 billion worth of debt forgiveness for 43 million student borrowers, based on its interpretation of a 20-year-old statute clearly intended to authorize only more selective and limited relief. On Friday, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed with Missouri that this interpretation was too creative and must be voided. In this contest between the executive and the judiciary, Congress was mostly a bystander, though both chambers did recently vote by narrow but bipartisan majorities to overturn President Biden’s plan. Mr. Biden vetoed that resolution on June 7.
2022年8月，拜登政府根据对一项已有20年历史的法规的解释，下令为4300万学生借款人免除3790亿美元的债务，这项20年前的法规显然是为了授权更有选择性和有限的减免。周五，最高法院以6比3的多数票同意密苏里州的观点，认为这一解释过于创造性，必须被废除。在行政部门和司法部门之间的这场较量中，国会基本上是一个旁观者，尽管参众两院最近确实以两党微弱多数投票推翻了拜登总统的计划，但拜登于6月7日否决了该决议。
This is not a great moment for the separation of powers. But at least the net effect is positive in policy terms. Mr. Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan was a mistake, and not only because of its high cost and shaky statutory foundation. The plan offered $10,000 for individuals making less than $125,000 a year, and $20,000 for borrowers who were previously recipients of Pell Grants for low-income students. Even so, some $140 billion of the benefit would accrue to relatively well-educated, mostly White students from affluent family backgrounds. Every dollar of relief would come from the broader taxpaying public, mostly made up of workers who did not attend or complete college. There’s nothing in it at all for those who saved for college and didn’t borrow.
这不是三权分立的伟大时刻。但至少在政策方面，其净效应是积极的。拜登的学生贷款减免计划是一个错误，不仅因为它成本高昂，而且法律基础不稳固。该计划为年收入低于12.5万美元的个人减免1万美元，为以前接受过佩尔助学金的低收入学生减免2万美元。即便如此，其中约1400亿美元的补贴将流向相对受过良好教育的白人学生，他们大多来自富裕家庭。每一美元的减免都将来自更广泛的纳税公众，他们大多是没有上过大学或完成大学学业的工人。对于那些为上大学而存钱而不借钱的人来说，他们得不到这里面的一分钱。
The plan might still have been worthwhile if it came accompanied by structural reforms to the nation’s system for financing higher education. But it did not. After this one-off benefit for current borrowers, new students would have signed up for loans, possibly borrowing even more than they would have otherwise, given that the Biden administration had created the expectation of another debt write-off someday. There would be no incentive for colleges and universities to control the costs that feed rising tuition rates.
如果该计划能伴随着对国家高等教育融资体系的结构性改革，它可能仍然是值得的。但事实并非如此。考虑到拜登政府创造了未来某一天又一次减免债务的预期，在现有借款人获得这一一次性福利后，新生们可能会报名贷款，甚至可能会借得更多。高校将没有动力控制导致学费上涨的成本。
Unquestionably, the $1.8 trillion in student debt that 43 million people owe represents a burden on household finances for many, and a potential drag on the overall economy. And yet neither effect should be overstated; student debt, at least in part, pays for itself in enhanced human capital, both for individual borrowers and for the economy as a whole.
毫无疑问，4300万人欠下的1.8万亿美元学生债务对许多家庭来说是一种负担，并可能拖累整体经济。然而，这两种影响都不应被夸大；学生贷款，至少在一定程度上，对个人借款人和整个经济来说，都是通过提高人力资本来收回成本的。
Mr. Biden said Friday that he would seek a “new path” to debt cancellation based on different legal authority, the 1965 Higher Education Act, though he supplied few details — and raised the question why he did not invoke that statute in the first place. Better for Mr. Biden, and everyone else, to focus on proposals that could make a meaningful dent in the cost of higher education. Loans for graduate education, which are currently allowed without limit and make up an increasing share of total student debt, should be capped. The federal government should use its bargaining power to leverage greater cost control by colleges and universities. More student aid should come from means-tested subsidies such as Pell Grants, as opposed to debt.
拜登周五表示，他将根据1965年《高等教育法》这一不同的法律授权，寻求一条“新途径”来取消债务，不过他没有提供多少细节，这带来了一个问题，那就是为什么他一开始没有援引这一法律。对拜登和其他所有人来说，最好是把重点放在那些可能对高等教育成本产生实质性影响的提案上。研究生教育贷款目前是不受限制的，而且在学生总债务中所占的比例越来越大，应该加以限制。联邦政府应该利用其议价能力，促使高校加强成本控制。更多的学生援助应该来自经经济状况调查的补贴，比如佩尔助学金，而不是债务。