Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman | Wikimedia Commons/Governor Tom Wolf from Harrisburg, PA
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman | Wikimedia Commons/Governor Tom Wolf from Harrisburg, PA
President Joe Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student loan debt per borrower — a plan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman supports — has been receiving massive backlash since it was introduced.
Notably, The Wall Street Journal editorial board said this move is an abuse of power by the president and will mainly affect taxpayers who otherwise have no obligation to pay off other college grads' student debt.
"This is easily the worst domestic decision of his presidency and makes chumps of Congress and every American who repaid loans or didn’t go to college," the WSJ editors write.
Biden's student loan write-off, which he announced Wednesday, "is an abuse of power that favors college grads at the expense of plumbers and FedEx drivers," WSJ editors wrote. The Penn Wharton Budget Model predicts the plan will cost around $300 billion, and there has reportedly "never been an executive action of this costly magnitude in peacetime.”
Fox News reported that borrowers making less than $125,00 a year will have their federal student loan debt cut by $10,000. For those who attended college on Pell Grants, Biden's plan would forgive up to $20,000. The president has also extended pandemic-era payment freezes through the end of December.
Fetterman advocates completely canceling student debt. In April, he published the following tweet: "PA has the third highest rate of student loan debt in [America] If we can spend hundreds of BILLION$ to bail out Wall Street, we can take action to cancel student loan debt.”
Biden’s plan has come under criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said Biden does not have the power to forgive student debt. "People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not,” Pelosi said in a video the Senate Republican Communications Center tweeted. “… The President can’t do it. So that’s not even a discussion.”
The WSJ editorial board said the tens of millions of Americans who would pay for the write-off include those who either didn’t go to college, have already repaid their debt, skimped and saved in order to pay for college, or attended lower-cost universities to avoid going too far into debt.
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