Another Democrat Comes Out Against Biden’s Student Debt Cancellation Plan

President Joe Biden speaks on student loan debt at the White House in Washington on Aug. 24, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

A former Clinton administration adviser said he opposes a plan from President Joe Biden to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for many borrowers.

“For that amount of money, you could fund free pre-K for every three- and four-year-old for 10 years,” Paul Begala, who is currently a CNN pundit, told CNN on Sunday. “You would do a lot more good for poor people ... and the underprivileged by doing pre-K. You could forgive all medical debt, which, unlike student debt, is not freely entered into.”

Last week, Biden announced that individual borrowers who make less than $125,000 annually and married couples or heads of households who make less than $250,000 per year will have up to $10,000 of their loan debt forgiven if they didn’t get a Pell grant. Up to $20,000 will be given to individuals who make less than $125,000 annually and married couples or heads of households who make less than $250,000 per year if they did receive a Pell grant.

Biden also extended a pause on student loan payments to the end of December 2022, according to the White House.

“So what is my party doing with this? They’re disadvantaging—I think they’re not helping the people that we’re here to help, which is [sic] poor people and underprivileged communities,” Begala said, noting that some Democrats running for office in the midterms are distancing themselves from Biden’s announcement. “And they’re not helping their politicians who are running.”

Republicans said that the plan is unfair to taxpayers and will likely exacerbate soaring inflation.

“It should impact the way people live their lives. I just thought it was monumentally unfair, unfair to people who didn’t go to college because they didn’t think they could afford it, unfair to people who pay their loans back, unfair to people who got higher education in an area that the government didn’t make loans, and just bad economics,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told ABC News.

“In addition to that, I think it’s going to have a long-term devastating effect on a student loan program that worked pretty effectively until about 10 years ago, when the federal government assumed responsibility for that program,” Blunt added.

But Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said last week that the move may help drive Democrat turnout in the 2022 midterms.

“If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” Cruz said on his “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast. “Like, holy cow! 20 grand. You know, maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November, and suddenly you just got 20 grand.”