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Commentary: Biden Student Loan Amnesty a Windfall for DC Staffers

Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

Commentary by Philip Wegmann originally published by RealClearPolitics.com

After announcing executive action to unilaterally and retroactively wipe away $300 billion in federal student debt, President Biden looked over his shoulder to answer a question: Was this debt forgiveness fair to those who had sacrificed and saved to pay their way through college? Biden deflected.

“Is it fair to people who, in fact, do not own multibillion dollar businesses,” he replied. “Some of these guys want to give them all tax breaks,” he said, seemingly referring to unrelated Republican tax proposals. “Is that fair?” he asked the reporter. “What do you think?”

Then, the president left. The fundamental question of fairness, however, remains as millions of Americans now search the Department of Education’s website for guidance to see if they qualify for loan forgiveness. Or if they would have qualified had they not repaid their loans earlier.

According to the plan, the White House will cancel $10,000 in federal student debt loans for any individual making less than $125,000 a year and $20,000 for those with Pell grants. Republicans quickly complained that the debt amnesty was “a slap in the face to working Americans.” For many working in Washington, D.C., however, it was a sigh of relief.

Student debt forgiveness is personal for the Biden administration. About one in five of the White House aides required to file a financial disclosure, as Bloomberg News previously noted, reported owing student debt. Collectively, those 30 senior White House staffers owe as much as $4.7 million. Those personal finances are not unusual in the nation’s capital.

There is more outstanding student debt in Washington than in any other city in the country. The average debtor in D.C., according to a 2021 breakdown by the small business analyst, AdvisorSmith, owes $54,982 in unpaid student loans. This includes many political staffers at the Department of Education, senior advisors as well as junior aides who moved to that agency from the Biden campaign.

Analysis of financial disclosures by the conservative-leaning American Accountability Foundation found that the political staff at the agency that oversees the student loan program stand to benefit. The outstanding student loan debt balance among 41 education staffers evaluated could amount to between $2.8 and $6.5 million. According to the AAF estimate obtained by RealClearPolitics, the president may have wiped away as much as $512,646 of their debt.

More than 45 million Americans owe $1.6 trillion in federal student debt, a balance that the New York Times reports dwarfs what they owe in car loans, credit cards, and other consumer debt. The White House insists that the administration’s plan will target low- to middle-income borrowers in particular, with 90% of relief going to earners who make less than $75,000 a year. As many as 43 million people can benefit, according to an administration infographic, and 20 million people “can have their loans fully cancelled.”

It is precisely the kind of relief, Biden said, that the country needs post-pandemic. “All of this means people can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt,” the president said. “To finally think about buying a home or starting a family or starting a business. And by the way, when this happens the whole economy is better off.”

Mitch McConnell called it “student loan socialism.” The Republican Senate minority leader accused the president of delivering “a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt. This policy is astonishingly unfair.”

Tom Jones echoed that criticism. The founder of AAF pointed to the “windfall” that political employees at the Education Department were set to receive, calling it “shameful” evidence of “the gap between the people and the ruling class in Washington, D.C.” Press spokesmen for the department did not respond to RCP requests for comment.

Susan Rice dismissed gripes about fairness as “inaccurate” and part of a “double standard.” The director of the White House domestic policy council, previously a visiting fellow at Harvard, an institution with an untaxed $53 billion endowment, told reporters that “Republicans didn’t complain when certain small businesses during the pandemic got extraordinary financial relief without having to pay back those loans.” The forgiven federal loans in question, from student loans and from the pandemic, were part of the same principle.

Rice said it “is fantastic” that some individuals were able to repay their loans already, but “that doesn’t mean that because some people were able to do so, nobody should help those that weren’t. By that logic, we wouldn’t help anybody in this country.”

Democrats repeatedly met Republican criticism with the same rebuttal: What about the GOP tax cut? But criticism wasn’t just coming from the right. Jason Furman, the chairman of Barack Obama’s White House Council of Economic Advisors, accused Biden of “recklessly” pouring “gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning.”

“Doing it while going well beyond one campaign promise ($10K of student loan relief) and breaking another (all proposals paid for) is even worse,” Furman tweeted.

The White House was eager to highlight the sympathetic cases on Wednesday, the “typical nurse” who brings home $77,000 a year and the “typical construction worker” who makes $38,000. “But then why design a policy that would provide up to $40,000 to a married couple making $249,000,” Furman asked.

When RealClearPolitics asked Bharat Ramamurti if forgiving a portion of the federal debt owed by law school and business school graduates was really building from “the bottom-up and middle-out,” the deputy director of the president’s National Economic Council replied, “Yeah, it is.

“As we’ve made clear, nobody in the top 5% of incomes is going to get a single dollar under this proposal,” he said, adding that the administration had “good data” that high earners “near the top of the income cutoff are much more likely to be experiencing distress after repayment starts.”

Ramamurti again compared Democrat debt amnesty to the Republican tax cut. “It is basically the reverse,” he told RCP, where “15% of the benefits went to people making under $75,000 a year, and 85% went to people making over $75,000 a year.”

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona insisted that the aim of Biden’s executive action was to provide pandemic relief. “Speaking to the fairness question,” he told Fox News, student debt relief was no different than pandemic small business loans. “It’s about making sure we’re taking care of Americans and investing in our economy and in our people.”

“But the people that already paid their student loans, they don’t get anything out of this deal,” asked Peter Doocy.

“Correct,” replied Cardona.
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Philip Wegmann, RealClearPolitics.com staff

Deneen Borelli

Deneen Borelli is the author of Blacklash: How Obama and the Left are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation. Deneen is a contributor with Newsmax Broadcasting. She is a former Fox News contributor and has appeared regularly on “Hannity,” “Fox & Friends,” “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” and “America’s Newsroom.” She has also appeared on Fox Business Network programs “Making Money with Charles Payne,” “The Evening Edit with Liz MacDonald,” and “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.” Previously, Deneen appeared on MSNBC, CNN, the BBC and C-SPAN. In addition to television, Deneen co-hosted radio programs on the SiriusXM Patriot channel with her husband Tom. Recently, Deneen co-hosted the Reigniting Liberty podcast with Tom. Deneen is a frequent speaker at political events, including the FreedomWorks 9.12.2009 March on D.C. which drew a crowd estimated at over 800,000 people. Deneen is also an Ambassador with CloutHub.com, a social media platform that promotes free speech, and with the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) which advances policies that put Americans first. Deneen testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources in May 2011 and before the Ohio House Public Utilities Committee in December 2011. Previously, Deneen was a BlazeTV.com host, Outreach Director with FreedomWorks.org overseeing its Empower.org outreach program, a Project 21 Senior Fellow, and Manager of Media Relations with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Prior to joining CORE, Deneen worked at Philip Morris USA for 20 years. During her corporate career at Philip Morris she worked in various positions, her last as Project Management Coordinator in the Information Management department where she was responsible for the department’s mandated quality processes, communications, sales information and database management. Deneen began her Philip Morris career as a secretary and advanced to positions of increasing responsibilities. Deneen worked full-time and attended classes at night for 11 years to earn her B.A. in Managerial Marketing from Pace University, New York City. Deneen served on the Board of Trustees with The Opportunity Charter School in Harlem, New York. She appeared in educational videos for children, worked as a runway fashion model, and auditioned for television commercials. Her interests include ancient history, pistol target shooting, photography, and volunteering at her church. Deneen currently resides in Connecticut with her husband Tom.

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