On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Steve Rattner, who served as counselor to the Treasury Secretary in the Obama administration, said that fairness is the biggest issue with President Joe Biden’s student loan cancellation program and “this basic issue of fairness that gave rise to the Tea Party” in 2009 is “going to be something I think we hear an awful lot about in the coming days.”
Rattner stated, “I think, by far, the biggest issue is the issue of fairness…half of Americans who don’t go to college don’t benefit from this. People like your family that worked hard, took an extra job to put their kid through college so he didn’t have to graduate with debt don’t get anything from this. There are substantial questions of fairness here in terms of who’s going to benefit and who’s going to be left without really getting any benefit from this.”
He later added, “You’ll remember, back in 2009, we passed $75 billion of homeowner relief as part of the response to the financial crisis. As a result of that, literally the day after, Rick Santelli… started a rant that turned into the Tea Party. And it was all over these fairness issues. It was all over the question of someone who had bought a house he couldn’t really afford, put on too much mortgage debt, gone to Disneyworld, whatever, and now is being bailed out by the government, versus someone who acted responsibly. I agree with what the Rev said, that this is a different issue in the sense that people are borrowing this money to go to college, and that’s a very responsible thing to do, in a way, but this basic issue of fairness that gave rise to the Tea Party, in fact, is going to be something I think we hear an awful lot about in the coming days.”
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