Efforts by the White House to move forward on a more narrowly-tailored part of its plan to cancel student loan debt remain vexing. The thinnest of silver linings to this development, reported recently by the Associated Press, are that it is smaller in scope and thus more affordable and that it isn’t blatantly an attempt to circumvent the legislative process by executive action.

Instead, the plan would contort laws passed more than a decade ago, using existing income-based plans to skirt the concept of transparent debate and compromise.

It also, as we’ve warned about Democrats’ earlier efforts to forgive student debt and as U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-North Carolina, notes, dumps “even more kerosene on an already raging student debt fire.”

Any proposal to cancel or forgive student loan debt without addressing the underlying problem — that for decades college tuition has increased in cost at a rate much greater than families’ incomes — only fuels the appetite to spend our way out of the problem temporarily. As new students enroll and take on inflated tuition, we immediately begin down the road to the same problem, only likely more expensive in the future.

It is an important aspect of this debate that could be addressed through the proper legislative channels, developing a resolution to the problem through extensive and public discussion of all of its aspect.

It clearly is an aspect that, if the Biden administration continues to try to address through ignoring Congress, will be neglected. Until it can’t be neglected anymore.

And then leaders will once again have to choose between the correct, legislative approach or unilateral actions that kick the can a little further down the road.

That’s something none of us can afford.