A watchdog group claims President Joe Biden’s newly announced student loan forgiveness scheme stands to benefit a number of Biden appointees who qualify for the debt wipeout scheme that Republicans have panned as “wildly unfair redistribution.”
“There are certain to be winners who are in senior policymaking positions for President Biden. This will amount to a raise for his closest allies and aides, some of whom may have even participated in crafting the policy,” the watchdog said in a statement.
The group says that among White House appointees, who have total outstanding student debt of between $3 million and $7.4 million, there are some who stand to benefit from the new program.
“Just at the White House, nearly 71 percent or 336 White House officials earn under the $125,000 threshold and potentially even more could be eligible under the household income cap,” Derrick Hollie, communications director for Inside Biden’s Basement, told the outlet.
“Counting the agencies, Inside Biden’s Basement has identified over 200 officials who may be eligible for this Biden handout on the backs of taxpayers,” Hollie told Fox.
Inside Biden’s Basement said in a statement that they’re still tracking down data for many Biden appointees and that “this list is surely just the tip of the iceberg of potential beneficiaries waiting to hand a fat bill to the American taxpayer.”
‘Breathing Room’
On Wednesday, Biden officially announced that his administration will forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loan debt for individual borrowers making less than $125,000 a year or married couples making less than $250,000 per year. Recipients of Pell Grants could qualify for a maximum of $20,000 under the debt wipe.
The student loan forgiveness was one of Biden’s presidential campaign promises and is the largest debt cancellation per individual so far.
‘Student Loan Socialism’
Republicans have widely denounced the measure, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calling it “wildly unfair redistribution” of wealth that would punish Americans who made sacrifices to pay off their student loans while benefiting those with higher earnings.“This policy is astonishingly unfair,” he continued, adding that Americans with outstanding student loans tend to earn more on average and lower-earning individuals would be footing the bill.
“Experts who studied similar past proposals found that the overwhelming benefit of student loan socialism flows to higher-earning Americans,” McConnell said.
“President Biden’s inflation is crushing working families, and his answer is to give away even more government money to elites with higher salaries,” the Kentucky Republican continued.
“Democrats are literally using working Americans’ money to try to buy themselves some enthusiasm from their political base,” he argued.
Besides concerns about general unfairness of the policy, a number of experts have said that the debt wipeout would have an inflationary impact at a time when inflation is already running at multi-decade highs.
Rising prices tend to hurt lower-income households the most, and if the policy does prove to be inflationary, it would add to the cost-of-living crunch pressuring working-class Americans.
