U.S. President Joe Biden discusses administration strategies to forgive federal trainee loan financial obligation throughout remarks in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., August 24, 2022.
Leah Millis|Reuters
President Joe Biden knocked congressional Republicans who slammed trainee loan forgiveness after passing tax cuts for the abundant.
“I will never apologize for helping America’s middle class — especially not to the same folks who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and giant corporations that racked up the deficit,” the president tweeted from his official @POTUS account on Thursday.
Biden made one of the most prominent policy choices of his presidency Wednesday when he revealed the cancellation of approximately $10,000 in federal trainee loan financial obligation for debtors making under $125,000 a year or $250,000 for couples or heads of families. Pell Grant receivers can have up to $20,000 of financial obligation canceled.
The financial obligation relief is topped at the quantity of the debtor’s arrearage, according to the Education Department.
Some congressional Republicans right away looked for to weaken Biden’s financial obligation forgiveness strategy. 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 college for most families,” McCarthy published on TwitterWednesday “Americans cannot afford Democrats’ radical agenda.”
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene called the loan forgiveness policy “unfair” in an interview on conservative news network Newsmax TELEVISION.
“Taxpayers all over the country … they shouldn’t have to pay off the great, big student loan debt for some college student that piled up massive debt going to some Ivy League school,” Greene stated. The Georgia Republican included that Biden’s financial obligation forgiveness policy is a plan to generate Democratic votes throughout the November midterm elections.
But public records reveal that Greene was the recipient of loan forgiveness in the early months of the pandemic. A Paycheck Protection Program loan of $182,200 offered to Greene’s business, Taylor Commercial Inc., in April 2020 was forgiven with accumulated interest, according to records preserved by ProPublica.
And rich Americans took advantage of an almost $2 trillion tax loophole after previous President Donald Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act– gone by a Republican- managed Congress– into law in2017 Three- quarters of the gain from the tax cuts described in the act would go to the leading 1% of earners, per an analysis by the Tax Foundation.
Biden’s financial obligation forgiveness policy is predicted to cost the federal government around $244 billion, according to college specialist MarkKantrowitz Forgiveness for Pell Grant receivers will cost an extra $120 billion.
The financial obligation forgiveness strategy likewise extends the pause on student loan debt repayments toDec 31, 2022.
Over 40 million Americans owe $1.7 trillion in trainee loan financial obligation.
