Students, taxpayers deserve better than Biden’s reverse Robin Hood plan

The president’s long-awaited announcement to provide mass student loan forgiveness is politics at its worst. Wednesday, President Joe Biden caved to the demands of radicals within his own party and in doing so turned his back on the hardworking Americans he has long claimed to champion.

Despite repeated warnings from economists and top advisors in his own party about the harms of this inflationary, ill-targeted action, the president took at least $2,000 out of the pocket of every hard-working taxpayer to pay the debts other people willingly took. For every student loan borrower receiving forgiveness, there are dozens of others who faithfully repaid their debts along with millions of Americans who never set foot on a college campus who are now forced to foot the bill for President Biden’s chosen few.

The American people deserve better than this.

They deserve a government that serves all its citizens, not those who were simply fortunate enough to be alive and holding student loan debt at a time of political convenience. What about the millions of low-income students borrowing this very moment for classes they are only just starting? Where is the relief for students who will borrow next semester or next year? It would be as wrong to grant them blanket forgiveness as it is to those who came before them.

REP. FOXX: STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS SCAM IS ALREADY BIDEN POLICY

A one-time student loan jubilee serves politicians more than the people who elected them, and those politicians should be held accountable for it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi herself put a public stake in the ground months ago when she said that mass student loan forgiveness can only be enacted by Congress. I applaud her willingness to look past the political gimmickry and can assure her that Republicans will strongly support congressional investigation around the limits of executive authority where hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake.

There is no such thing as forgiveness – the obligation to pay back one’s debts does not disappear into thin air just because Democrats don’t understand basic economics. Indeed, a government watchdog report found that the federal government miscalculated the cost of loan program by $311 billion dollars over the last two decades – largely due to generous forgiveness programs created by the president’s party. The actions taken by this administration will more than double that number, meaning taxpayers stand to lose as much as 50 cents on the dollar for every loan on the federal governments book.

We must know how the president can propose widespread forgiveness of student loans yet direct his Department of Education to simultaneously hand out $100 billion more to millions of borrowers. And if taxpayers are indeed funding a predatory loan program akin to indentured servitude as Democrats have suggested, the president should be hard-pressed to justify why he does n’t use his supposed authority to halt federal student lending entirely.

The American people deserve an honest diagnosis of the problem and a real solution.

Ad hoc student loan forgiveness is neither rationale nor responsible policy; it’s a transparent effort to curry votes at a time when the president’s party faces a tumultuous mid-term election. Any effort to fix the student loan debt crisis must focus not just on the challenges of borrowers today, but how to rebuild a better system for those tomorrow. Simply put, Americans need Congress to do their jobs.

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Instead of a reverse Robin Hood that places the burden of our broken student loan system on the shoulders of taxpayers, Republicans offered President Biden a blueprint on how to reform the system itself. It’s a solution that provides targeted relief to borrowers harmed by years of poorly designed policy that protects future generations of students going forward. Moreover, it opens new opportunities to the middle class outside of the debt-to-degree model that the public now has every right to question.

But for Congress to do its job, Americans need a leader who is willing to take off the political gloves and do the same. While President Biden has decided to take the partisan road to appease the few, Republicans remain committed to building a better financial aid system that benefits all Americans.

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We must bring down the cost of college for middle-class families, hold schools accountable for their students’ outcomes, and help protect the ability for every individual to have an opportunity to achieve the American dream, regardless of their financial circumstance.

The American people can no longer afford the status quo. And they deserve far better than what they got today.

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