I tend to agree with your general fiscal conservatism but I think you might be being a bit penny wise pound foolish.
Whether you like it or not you have to add up the potential costs of letting Ukraine fall, which includes Taiwan, NATO in general, our trade relationships, etc. Now does it add up, I'm not sure but this isn't happening in a vacuum.
On the student loan front the inconvenient truth for republican demagogues;
1. There is a massive amount of bad debt that is just never going to be repaid and needs to be written off, forgive it, allow bankruptcy, but we need to write it off, because we are spending more administering it than we will every get back
2. Red southern/midwest states have the most of these delinquent loans, it's not WAGS degrees it's unfinished degrees at Junior Colleges in Georgia, South Caroline, Ohio, Florida, etc.
... the inconvenient truth for dems here is that Biden created this mess when he helped craft legislation that did away with bankruptcy protection for student loan borrowers.