By Congressman Tom Cole
For several years, radical liberals have called for mass student loan forgiveness with no indication with what it would do to our country’s economy or how it would affect hardworking Americans. While federal student loan repayments were understandably paused during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, now two years later, Americans have returned to work and should resume paying down their loans. However, President Joe Biden has issued another extension on the repayment pause, yet again showing he is more focused on protecting the interests of the wealthiest and most radical faction of his party instead of policies that would actually help America’s current inflationary crisis.
The president’s pause on federal student loan payments disproportionately benefits those who receive graduate degrees and higher incomes. In fact, nearly a third of student loan debt is held by the top 20 percent of earners and 56 percent of student debt is held by households with graduate degrees. This would bail out the wealthiest 20 percent of American households at the cost of other hardworking Americans, setting a dangerous precedent for wealthy Americans to go to college and later expect low- and middle-income working families to pay off loans they promised to pay the government back. These sorts of policies are the real cause of inflation – not Russia.
While Americans are already spending $3,500 extra a year because of inflation, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates a cost of $4.3 billion for every month the Biden Administration allows borrowers to evade payments without accruing interest. And since President Biden has assumed office, this handout has cost taxpayers nearly $82 billion. Finally, this action will not only increase the debt owed by American families by upwards of $17 billion while driving up inflation, but also add $1.6 trillion to our already more than $30 trillion national debt.
In response to Democrats’ blatant hypocrisy on student loan debt, earlier this year I introduced legislation aimed to dissuade members of Congress from supporting some of these policies when they go to cast their vote on the House floor. The Can’t Cancel Your Own Debt Act would disqualify members of Congress from participating in federal programs enacted during their tenure to cancel student loans – whether established by executive order, agency action or an Act of Congress. It is simply unconscionable that a Member of Congress making an annual salary of $174,000, paid for by the American taxpayer, could then personally benefit by voting to cancel the repayment of their federal student loans. Members of Congress collecting a six-figure salary should surely be required to repay the money they borrowed from the U.S. Treasury.
President Biden’s decision to continue the pause on student loan repayments is completely contradictory to the announcement of the end of Title 42 coronavirus protections at the southern border. The president cannot have it both ways. We cannot simultaneously have a pandemic so severe that no one needs to repay their student loans yet so mild that millions of largely unvaccinated illegal aliens can be allowed to enter our country unchecked for coronavirus. The cancellation of student loans is yet another handout to a relatively well-to-do group at the expense average taxpayers who have worked hard, repaid their debts and played by the rules. That is simply unconscionable.
