Brace for waterworks as student loans come due

Stand by for the next round of sob stories — what’s about to happen next, you will be told, is definitely a hate crime, maybe even genocide.

Here’s the scoop: Millions of deadbeats who have had a two-year vacation from having to pay down their student loans will now have to … start repaying the money they borrowed to get their absurd, worthless college degrees.

Being required to pay off debt you willingly accrued and signed binding legal contracts to repay — how un-American is that?

The feds’ not-so-dunning letters started going out late last week, and the story broke when Chasten Buttigieg, the spouse of the U.S. Transportation Security, posted the notice on social media with his response:

“LOL no thank you Merry Christmas next.”

Remember that Chasten’s, uh, better half makes $221,400 a year, and has a big Democrat (meaning, seven figures, like Andrew Cuomo’s) book contract. Pete just took a few months off with full pay. They own property on Lake Michigan, but have complained about having to spend $4,500 a month to rent an apartment in D.C. that, gulp, doesn’t have a den.

And now this latest indignity! Chasten, along with millions of others, is actually being asked to … pay back money he borrowed.

AOC, for one, feels his pain — she owes $17,000 in student loans and thus has only been able to afford one Tesla and a French bulldog designer puppy on her $174,000-a-year Congressional salary.

This latest round of sky-is-falling stories will all feature the usual “advocates” and “experts” predicting the end of civilization if the tattooed slackers have to pay down their loans at the rate of some $400 a month.

Whenever any of these multibillion-dollar Panic-related handouts is stopped, Armageddon is always predicted. Remember the end of the eviction moratorium last summer? The “advocates” predicted mass homelessness. Nothing happened.

Are you old enough to recall when the media used to cover real news? They had, you know, beats — City Hall, the State House, police, etc.

Now the only beat that matters is the Apocalypse Beat. Omicron! Delta! Global warming! Global cooling! Tornadoes! Evictions! Student loans! The same low-IQ “reporters” careen from one faux catastrophe to the next, citing “experts” who dolefully predict doom that never occurs.

The great thing about the Apocalypse Beat is that it’s so easy. No shoe leather is expended. Fact-checking is unnecessary because every story is 100 percent fact-free. When nothing happens, after all the doomsday headlines, no one demands a correction.

As usual on the Apocalypse Beat, the advocates are already being deployed. Have you ever heard of the Student Debt Crisis Center? How about Student Borrowers Protection Center, which self-identifies as “a student loan advocacy non-profit.”

If the deadbeat hippies default, the experts at the nonprofits shudder, “they could be subject to wage garnishment.”

You mean, like if you don’t pay alimony or child support? Not that this is a major concern for most of the affected parties — you have to have a job before you can start worrying about getting your wages garnished.

Consider who’s going to be whining about having to repay their student loans — a lot of them got to stiff their landlords for more than a year. Until Labor Day, they were grabbing not only unemployment but an extra $300 a week in welfare from the feds.

The food stamp dole was just raised 21% across the board. If they have kids, the non-working classes are grabbing another $300 a month in welfare per child.

But making token payments on their student loans will destroy their lives.

One of the subjects they used to require in some high schools in Massachusetts was Latin. I can’t read Cicero in the original, but I still recall certain phrases, one of which is:

“Caveat emptor.” Let the buyer beware.

I don’t know how much Chasten Buttigieg owes, but he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, with a double major in global studies and theater.

Then he picked up a master’s in education from DePaul University. And as if that weren’t enough, according to his Wikipedia bio, he was a “Fellow” at Harvard’s Institute of Politics — Camelot High, where Sonny McDonough said people went to learn how to lose elections.

Given the demographic profile of most of these student-loan goldbricks, you’d assume that Dementia Joe’s caregivers would be all in on keeping this scam going. So it must poll very badly — among everyone who either didn’t go to college, or paid their own way or their kids’, or who actually didn’t major in … global studies and theater.

When taxpayers hear these grifters whining that we should pick up the tab for their phony-baloney degrees, after saying “Caveat emptor,” we ask ourselves the obvious questions:

If you get your college loans paid off, can I not pay back some of the money I owe? My mortgage perhaps? My credit card bills, or truck payment? My real-estate taxes? My winter vacation? And if I did pay my own way through school, am I now eligible for … reparations?

As a texter on my radio show said, “My car needs an oil change. Will you pay for it?”

One old timer mentioned that he was coming up on his 72nd birthday. He has a 401(k) retirement account, and so will be required to begin making withdrawals. It’s a federal mandate, not because the feds care about your golden years, but because they want their cut – in the income taxes you’ll owe on the disbursement.

Remember, unlike student loans, nothing in your 401(k) is borrowed money. You put everything in. But the feds will grab your money because … you turned 72.

“I don’t want to pay those taxes,” my caller said. “If these people don’t have to pay back money that’s not even theirs, why should I have to pay taxes on my own money?”

That’s a question nobody ever asked Chasten Buttigieg at Camelot High.