Calvert, Bucshon, Bacon agree: Student loan forgiveness plan hurts average Americans

U.S. Reps. Don Bacon (R-NE), Larry Bucshon (R-IN), and Ken Calvert (R-CA) earlier this week denounced President Joe Biden’s nearly $300 billion student loan forgiveness plan as unfair to everyday Americans and inflationary.

“President Biden’s federal student loan cancellation plan is a ‘robin-hood’ in reverse where the working man and woman is paying for the wealthiest in our society,” Rep. Bacon said on Aug. 24. “Those who worked two jobs to pay off their school debt or selected the most cost-effective means to gain an education got the shaft from Joe Biden.”

Rep. Bacon noted that the president’s three-part plan announced on Wednesday simply shifts the burden of debt but does not erase it. “This also undermines our military, who incentivize joining by offering degrees and tuition assistance,” he added. 

The Biden administration should be looking at programs that lower interest rates, incentivize employers to offer tuition assistance programs, or offer some forgiveness to those who take needed jobs in underserved areas, Bacon suggested. “Our national debt continues to grow and this undermines personal accountability,” he said. 

Rep. Bucshon also bemoaned the impact that President Biden’s federal student loan forgiveness plan could have on the national debt.

“As much as 70 percent of the debt that will be forgiven belongs to our nation’s top income-earners. But all taxpayers — those who chose to attend an institute of higher education that required them to take out student loans, and those who did not — will suffer as hundreds of billions of dollars are added to the national debt,” said Rep. Bucshon. “It is unfair to make those who have never gone to college, or who took out loans and paid them back, pay for others’ student loans through the resulting increases in the cost of living.”

The plan, added Rep. Bucshon, “is just another foolish attempt by President Biden to gain popularity at the expense of everyday Americans.”

At the same time, Rep. Calvert called President Biden’s decision to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for families making up to a quarter million dollars “unfair and inflationary.”

“This move is a slap in the face of any family that saved for their child’s education or any college graduates who worked tirelessly to pay off their student loans,” Rep. Calvert said. “It’s also outrageous to ask the millions of hard-working Americans who didn’t go to college to pony up the tax dollars to cover the costs of sending the children of upper-middle class families to college.”

Once again, said Rep. Calvert, the Biden administration is advancing massive amounts of inflationary spending on the backs of American taxpayers to transfer money to its favored political supporters.

“This game of picking winners and losers is wrong and it’s propelling our economy deeper into a recession,” he said, adding that Biden’s plan does nothing to address the root problem, which is the rising cost of a college education. 

Since 1980, Rep. Calvert noted that the average cost of a college education has risen by 1,200 percent. “Instead of helping to curb those costs, today’s announcement will have the opposite effect and raise tuition rates across America,” he said.