Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive some student loans was “monumentally unfair” to people who didn’t attend college because they could not afford it.
Blunt said, “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 in addition to that.”
He continued, “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.”
Anchor George Stephanopoulos said, “Most economists who looked at it said it’s not going to increase inflation.”
Blunt said, “Well, if that’s what they’re thinking, most economists are wrong. You can’t forgive that much debt and assume people won’t spend the money for other things. It’s certainly going to take about $24 billion that should have been coming into the federal government every year in payments and make that available for more spending. You know, the president says it’s going to grow the economy, so how it doesn’t impact inflation and grows the economy. You’ve got $300 billion to maybe $500 billion going back into the economy in ten years at a time when the federal reserve chairman is saying, we’ve got to do everything we can to slow the economy down. You don’t slow the economy down by forgiving debt and giving people another $24 billion to spend.”
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