Photo by Gage Skidmore

The Biden administration’s decision to forgive thousands of dollars in federal student loan debt has now been backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). When Sanders made an appearance on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday, he chastised Republicans and weak Democrats for criticizing Biden’s shocking decision to forgive up to $10,000 in regular student loan debt. In addition to pushing for the much more radical proposal of making public colleges tuition-free. Sanders claimed that Biden had ‘done the right thing.’

As The Daily Wire reports:

“I know it is shocking to some Republicans that the government, on occasion, does something to benefit working families and low-income people,” Sanders said. “I don’t hear any of these Republicans squawking when we give massive tax breaks to billionaires, when we have an effective tax rate today, such that the 1% having a lower effective tax rate than working people.”

“We have major corporations in a given year don’t pay a nickel in federal taxes,” he continued.” That’s okay, but suddenly when we do something for working people, it is a terrible idea.”

“I was in Boston last week and I was talking to nurses, and these nurses were telling me that they are working in some cases two jobs, outrageous hours partly in order to pay for the student debts that they have accumulated. So in my view, the president did the right thing, and we have got to be really thinking about higher education in general and in my view, at a time when hundreds of thousands of bright, young people can’t even afford to go to college, if we’re going to be competitive in a global economy, we need to make public colleges and universities tuition-free.”

A number of Congressional Democrats in hotly-contested midterm races criticized Biden’s student loan decision. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) said Wednesday that canceling debt “doesn’t address the root problems that make college unaffordable.”

Some of Sanders’ collegues didn’t share his good feelings toward the bill however. Biden’s decision, according to Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), is “no way to develop policy” and was criticized for skirting Congress. The decision “sends the incorrect message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet,” according to Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), who is running for the Senate in Ohio. Sanders rejected the criticism from his more moderate colleagues however.




Comments

  1. Bernie Sanders is neither “radical ” nor a “socialist ” and people who call him a socialist don’t even know what socialism is .

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