Student Debt
Do the right thing or the political thing?
The answer to that question, if you're a Republican, is ALWAYS do the political thing, like they did with student debt. They had a choice and their choice was to screw about 800,000 Americans with debt.
Here's the story in a nutshell. Biden got the student debt relief bill passed with Republicans fighting tooth and nail to stop debt relief for students. The Twitter account for the GOP House judiciary was among the critics, writing, simply, "If you take out a loan, you pay it back. Period." Indeed, many in the GOP, including lawmakers and pundits, participated in Donald Trump's Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, receiving sizeable business loans at the height of the pandemic. In many cases, those loans went to larger businesses, as well as Trump pals. And in many cases, those loans were forgiven. What's more, those PPP loans, and their erasures, are in the public record. One recipient was Marjorie Taylor Greene. The Georgia representative went on Newsmax, where she called the loan forgiveness "completely unfair." She didn't say so when her construction company's $182,300 PPP loan generously went up in smoke.
Biden has canceled $17 billion of student loans. He's also committed to reforming student loan repayment and student loan forgiveness. But, the Republicans found a problem and they sued, claiming that banks, you know, those places making trillions of dollars in profits, would be hurt if the private loans were forgiven, so, those who owe money on private student loans are still faced with their same burdens of debt and payments. Private loans account for a little more than 7%, or $148 billion, of existing student loan debt.
Once again, given a choice between doing the right thing or doing a political thing, the GOP chose political thing at the expense of 800,000 Americans. When they discovered what they thought was a flaw in the program, the American thing - the right thing to have done was to reach across the aisle and say to the Democrats, "Hey, we found this issue, let's find a solution." But, true to form, they sued instead so they could try to make a political gain.
If they had done the right thing, they could be campaigning on that right thing, now. But, no, that's just not how the Republican mind works; right never trumps political cravings for power in the conservative mind. I hope those 800,000 people the GOP screwed know enough to vote BLUE next month.