Recent polling from Ipsos and ABC News finds that overall approval for the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to upend the president’s plan to provide broad forgiveness from student loan debt is under a majority, meaning that yet again Republicans have found themselves essentially out of step with many Americans around the country.
Biden and his team have implemented some forgiveness from student debt already, but these moves have been much more targeted, focusing on groups like individuals working in public service fields who have already made what works out to 10 years of payments. In this other context, Republicans have sometimes veered into even outright maligning those who have experienced financial difficulty in the context of loan agreements into which they entered around the time of their college education, with these GOP officials failing to generally acknowledge the potential for a demanding financial system to essentially take advantage of vulnerable teens and young adults. Do people really have the best powers of making decisions when they’re 18 or close?
In the polling from Ipsos and ABC, 45 percent approved of the court’s decision on Biden’s debt forgiveness program. A full 40 percent disapproved, with a remainder saying that they didn’t know one way or the other. Thus, even if everybody else didn’t necessarily disapprove, a majority was not with the Republicans.
Numbers were actually roughly similar for other recent moves from the court, including its decisions to strike down the use of affirmative action in college admissions and essentially allow discrimination in creative professions such as designing a website. The latter saw the closest result, with 43 percent approving and 42 percent opposed.
And notably, most Americans said they believe the court makes its decisions generally on the basis of members’ political views. Going forward, it’s worth remembering again how some of the Republican politicians who have complained most intensely about forgiving student debt have actually themselves benefited from debt forgiveness in the context of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) money tied to COVID-19 and first rolled out when Donald Trump was in office.
