Relief painting

It’s a kind of an art, isn’t it?

The Biden administration won’t give up on student loan relief prospects. Just because the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the administration once doesn’t mean the White House can’t pick at the edges— until it gets everything it wishes. Maybe not in one whole bite. But nobody says you have to eat an entire meal in one gulp.

This time around, the administration is targeting loans to the “especially vulnerable”—those who owe so much, or earn so little, that they won’t be able to repay lenders anytime soon, if ever.

These are the four categories in the new plan:

■ Borrowers whose balance exceeds what they originally owed

■ Those who entered repayments 25 or more years ago

■ Those who used loans to attend career-training programs that led to unreasonable debt or insufficient earnings, or

■ Those who are eligible for other loan forgiveness, but did not apply.

Did you catch how much in this that’s non-specific? The administration says details are to come, and those details will certainly matter. What is unreasonable debt? What is insufficient earnings? Six-figure debt may sound unreasonable for a four-year degree from a directional state school, but what about a Ph.D. from one of the Ivy Leagues? And degrees and majors are blistered all over with different starting job salaries. What is a good paycheck for a creative writing graduate might be much too low for a surgeon.

But how about that last category? To show how little this administration thinks of responsibility, it proposes to do away with college loan debt for those who did not apply for it.

Thinking of this stuff will either soften your brain or petrify it.

There’s a fifth category under discussion, too. It is for “those who are experiencing financial hardship that the current student loan system does not currently adequately address.” How easily, do you think, could that category be molded into fitting almost any situation?

“President Biden and I are committed to helping borrowers who’ve been failed by our country’s broken and unaffordable student loan system,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “We are fighting to ensure that student debt does not stand in the way of opportunity from realizing the benefits of their higher education.”

If the system is broken, then how will the government fix it by forgiving all those loans? That sounds like the best way yet to make it even more broken. We can imagine how much students will borrow next year knowing that Uncle Sucker is always behind them to bail them out.

And student debt standing in the way of opportunity? We thought student debt had the exact opposite effect.

These loan agreements are not documents with secret sections. The onus to understand a loan agreement is on the borrower. So is the responsibility to pay back the L-O-A-N.

In September, the national unemployment rate stood at 3.8 percent. Arkansas’ tiny 2.7 percent rate in August was actually an increase over the previous month. If you’re an American and you want a job, you can get one.

It’s one reason we’ve endured the UAW and other myriad labor strikes this year. In most industries, workers can fearlessly demand wage increases, because there are few skilled people to replace them.

And what is education if it’s not about gaining in some way, shape or form a skill? There may be some exceptions when relief is justified, but acrossthe-board forgiveness isn’t one of them.

There is so much still to be defined in the latest proposal. This from a story in this newspaper Tuesday: “Loans used to attend low-value college programs would also be wiped away. Borrowers would fall into that category if they attended a program that fails new standards outlined in a separate federal rule known as gainful employment.”

Huh? So the administration that wants to forgive student loans will decide the definition of those programs that can be forgiven? Somebody tell us this isn’t government work.

The president has said publicly that he wants a plan that will help “as many borrowers as possible,” which makes sense for a politician seeking re-election. But what doesn’t make sense, and never has, is that the money will go on the nation’s credit card, and all of us will have to repay it (or keep it on the credit card for our kids to repay, while we keep paying interest).

How, one wonders, does paying off the student loan for a doctor help the plumber who works just as many hours in a week, never went to college, and doesn’t make as much money? The idea of student loan forgiveness isn’t very progressive.

But perhaps the worst part about the idea of loan forgiveness—or loan transfer to taxpayers: It says that individual responsibility doesn’t matter. And encourages worse behavior in the future.

We will follow the details of the administration’s proposals, along with the rest of you. Details matter. You-knowwho lives there.