President Joe Biden announced his new student loan forgiveness plan on Wednesday, which will forgive $20,000 of student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients, and $10,000 for other borrowers making under $125,000 a year.
While the Biden administration has not said how much they expect the program to cost overall, a new report released today suggests it could cost the federal government a total of $500 billion.
U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville) said on Thursday during an appearance on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program” that taxpayers are now stuck with paying the bill for student loan forgiveness.
“The bottom line is there’s no such thing as cancelling or forgiving students’ debt loans,” Aderholt said. “The debt is going to have to go somewhere, and obviously if the taxpayers foot the bill, then the hard-working American taxpayer is the one that will be having to pay at the end of the day.”
The Alabama congressman believes this plan also has the potential to increase the inflationary burden on the overall economy.
“The real concern I think right now with inflation and the numbers are at a forty year high,” he argued. “Making the decision unilaterally to do this I think has some real problems … adding to our debt and inflation going up almost daily that we’re seeing is just not a good recipe that will start brining inflation down. So the timing here is just not good at all.”
He admitted though that rising tuition cost is a real problem, but believes Biden’s plan is the exact opposite approach to really fixing the issue.
“Obviously, there are a lot of things that we want to try to do to help students, or rather former students, those that are out in the workforce with student loans, but just cancelling the debt, I just don’t feel like it’s the best way to do it. It’s only going to encourage more people to go into debt thinking that the government is ultimately going to forgive the debt. Also think about all those who have worked so hard to pay off their debt.”
Aderholt highlighted a plan that House Republicans are currently formulating that he believes will help lower the cost of college in the future.
“There is a piece of legislation called the REAL Act,” he explained. “It’s called Responsible Education Assistance through Loans Reforms Act and this is legislation that targets relief to borrowers that have faithfully made payments, and it gives a second chance to borrowers who have faced challenges and consequences of default. And in addition to that, it also expands a lot of opportunities for students that maybe need to go into learning other valuable skills outside the tradition education model.”
Aderholt also emphasized that just cancelling the debt was not fair to those who were responsible.
“[T]hink about all those that who have worked so hard to pay off their debt,” he advised. “All of a sudden, now they’re like, ‘Well I did all that hard work and save and did all the right things and now the government is just going to be forgiving debt.’”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
