In a bold move, Joe Biden on Wednesday wrote off $4.8 billion worth of student loan debt for 80,300 people.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona boasted this, and said “This level of debt relief is unparalleled, and we have no intention of slowing down.”
The Biden administration has now accumulated a total forgiveness amount of $132 billion in taxpayer-backed student loan debt relief.
About 3.6 million Americans were believed to benefit from the program.
The latest round of student loan forgiveness includes $2.6 billion for 34,400 borrowers under the public service loan forgiveness (PSLF) scheme and $2.2 billion for 46,000 borrowers under the one-time payment adjustment for income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.
Not everybody is happy with the decision, online users expressed disbelief in the Biden administration which “gives out free money” to people.
Critics also declared that the program was unfair to Americans who sacrificed to pay off their debts.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) blasted Biden and said his announcement was a “slap in the face of every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces to avoid taking on debt.”
This move can only be observed as Biden’s strategy as they move forward on his re-election bid.
Republican candidates for president disapprove of the debt reprieve.
For former president Trump, “Today, the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundreds of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars, in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence; very unfair.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reminds Biden that to cancel student debt, the president has to get authorization from Congress.
“…President Biden is once again asking hard-working taxpayers to foot the bill for the loans of well-off graduates,” said Speaker Mike Johnson.
The GOP members led the House to vote to dismiss Biden’s new student loan repayment program, even though the Senate has already approved the policy.
The House affirms the call to repeal Biden’s loan repayment plan, known as the SAVE plan, with a 210-189 vote.
According to Politico, two Democrats — Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez of Washington — joined with GOP lawmakers in voting against the program, which the Biden administration began rolling out over the past several months. That pair of centrist Democrats also voted earlier this year to block Biden’s broader plan to cancel student debt.
