PUNTA GORDA, Fla.–President Joe Biden’s expansive student loan forgiveness plan drew a pointed response from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who declared that the Universities graduating students with “worthless” degrees should be held responsible for the debt, not the American taxpayers.
“They’re (universities) producing people that have gone deep into debt, and their degree is not worth anything. They’re not able to make enough money to pay it back, then that’s on them,” DeSantis said at a press event on Aug. 25. “They’ve had an incentive to get more and more loans taken out, and then put it in their pocket.”
The Biden administration’s student debt program as well as other policies enacted in prior months are “going to cause more inflation,” the governor said.
“Even Obama’s economists came out and said this is the worst time to do this—it’s gonna fuel inflation,” he said. “This is not a good policy.”
DeSantis questioned the White House’s authority in the debt cancellation plan.
“[Biden] is relying on emergency power because of COVID,” he pointed out. “He may not have the constitutional authority to do this.”
The governor explained that it “did not make sense” if someone decided to get a “Ph.D. in gender studies five years ago, and that has something to do with COVID?”
This policy will be challenged because it is “an abuse of power,” and it is not “constitutional,” he said.
Emergency powers are a dangerous and “slippery slope,” DeSantis added, because “they want to be able to override the traditional rule of law.”
Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan would grant individuals earning less than $125,000 a year or families earning less than $250,000 eligibility for up to $10,000 in debt cancellation, and Pell Grant recipients who meet those income standards will be eligible for relief of up to $20,000; those grants are typically awarded to students from low-income households to help them cover their college expenses.
In addition, almost eight million people who borrowed money to pay their college tuition may be eligible to receive relief automatically because the department already has their relevant income information, Biden said during his announcement at the White House on Aug. 24.
“In keeping with my campaign promise, my Administration is announcing a plan to give working and middle-class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023,” Biden said in a Tweet.
DeSantis called the plan not only unconstitutional but “unfair.”
“They are going to require the American taxpayer to basically be responsible for some of these student loans,” he said. “It’s very unfair to people who took other pathways in life that didn’t require them to take out a lot of loans. It’s very unfair. You may have a truck driver that has to pay back a loan for somebody that got a Ph.D. in gender studies–that’s not right.”
