White House aides repeatedly refuse to address the cost of President Joe Biden’s decision on Wednesday to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt.
“I can’t give you that off the top of my head,” White House director of domestic policy Susan Rice said Wednesday during the daily briefing when asked whether the administration had estimated the cost of the president’s decision.
She repeated the cost of the program would not be fully known until the federal government knew how many people would take advantage of it.
The president spent several months stalling a decision on canceling student debt, telling reporters he was waiting for further analysis about the impacts of the decision.
But after the decision was announced, his aides pretended they had no estimate of how much it would cost the American people.
“Standing here today, I can’t tell you how all of those are going to shake out,” Director of the National Economic Council Bharat Ramamurti told reporters on Wednesday.
The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated on Thursday that Biden’s decision would cost around $500 billion, significantly more than the estimated $329 billion estimate of the Penn Wharton Budget Model conducted before the announcement.
But when confronted with the puzzling question of why the White House would not release any estimated cost of Biden’s student debt plan, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to go into detail on Thursday, punting to Rice’s earlier refusal to answer to the question.
“I don’t have any more to speak on to that,” she said. “Just kind of relay back to what — what the ambassador [Rice] said yesterday.”
She defended Biden’s fiscal record, despite his costly multitrillion-dollar spending agenda.
“The president’s record on fiscal responsibility is second to none,” she insisted.