U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about administration plans to forgive federal student loan debt during remarks within the Roosevelt Room on the White House in Washington, U.S., August 24, 2022.
Leah Millis | Reuters
President Joe Biden slammed congressional Republicans who criticized student loan forgiveness after passing tax cuts for the wealthy.
“I won’t ever apologize for helping America’s middle class — especially to not the identical folks who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut for the rich and giant corporations that racked up the deficit,” the president tweeted from his official @POTUS account on Thursday.
Biden made one of the influential policy decisions of his presidency Wednesday when he announced the cancellation of as much as $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers earning under $125,000 a yr or $250,000 for married couples or heads of households. Pell Grant recipients can have as much as $20,000 of debt canceled.
The debt relief is capped at the quantity of the borrower’s outstanding debt, in line with the Education Department.
Some congressional Republicans immediately sought to undermine Biden’s debt forgiveness plan. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called it a “radical agenda.”
“Biden’s debt transfer scam will make inflation even worse and does nothing to stop the runaway cost of faculty for many families,” McCarthy posted on Twitter Wednesday. “Americans cannot afford Democrats’ radical agenda.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the loan forgiveness policy “unfair” in an interview on conservative news network Newsmax TV.
“Taxpayers all around the country … they shouldn’t must repay the good, big student loan debt for some college student that piled up massive debt going to some Ivy League school,” Greene said. The Georgia Republican added that Biden’s debt forgiveness policy is a scheme to usher in Democratic votes through the November midterm elections.
But public records show that Greene was the beneficiary of loan forgiveness within the early months of the pandemic. A Paycheck Protection Program loan of $182,200 given to Greene’s company, Taylor Business Inc., in April 2020 was forgiven with accrued interest, in line with records maintained by ProPublica.
And wealthy Americans benefited from a virtually $2 trillion tax loophole after former President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — passed by a Republican-controlled Congress — into law in 2017. Three-quarters of the profit from the tax cuts outlined within the act would go to the highest 1% of earners, per an evaluation by the Tax Foundation.
Biden’s debt forgiveness policy is projected to cost the federal government around $244 billion, in line with higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. Forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients will cost a further $120 billion.
The debt forgiveness plan also extends the pause on student loan debt repayments to Dec. 31, 2022.
Over 40 million Americans owe $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.
