Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized President Biden’s student loan forgiveness program at an event Thursday, saying the move ignored the bigger problem of universities raising tuition.
Biden announced Wednesday that up to $10,000 in student loan debt would be canceled for individuals making less than $125,000. The Justice Department has argued that the president has the authority to do so under the 2003 HEROES Act.
“If you’re gonna talk about debt then you should look at who has benefited the most from all this exorbitant debt that has been taken out over the last generation? It’s the universities. They have bloated administrative budgets,” DeSantis said.
“So my view is if you’re gonna do some type of student loan relief—it’s not really relief because people are still paying for it — but the people who should pay for it are not the American taxpayer. It should be the universities who should be responsible for that. If they’re producing people that go deep into debt and their degree is not worth anything and they’re not able to make enough money to pay it back, well then that’s on them.”
DeSantis also argued that canceling student debt was unfair to taxpayers who did not take on the debt. (RELATED: ‘Chuck Him Across The Potomac’: DeSantis Shares His Thoughts On ‘Little Elf’ Anthony Fauci)
“It’s very unfair to have a truck driver have to pay back a loan for somebody that got, like, a PhD in Gender Studies. That’s not fair. That’s not right.”
It’s unfair to force a truck driver to pay a loan for someone who got a PhD in gender studies.
Taxpayers shouldn’t be footing the bill for student loan relief and Biden’s order isn’t constitutional.
If anything, universities handing out worthless degrees should be on the hook. pic.twitter.com/wZuH6GxPII
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) August 25, 2022
DeSantis went on to claim that the policy would exacerbate already high inflation.
“But what Biden is doing is gonna cause more inflation which is — you just had one of [former President Barack] Obama’s economists come out and say this is the worst time to do this. It’s gonna fuel inflation. This is not good policy,” DeSantis said.
Former Obama administration economist Jason Furman criticized Biden’s student loan cancelation policy Wednesday, saying it poured “roughly half [a] trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire.”