Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos condemned President Biden on Tuesday for his latest plan to cancel student loans.
“What President Biden is trying to do is just a blatant vote buy. The Supreme Court has ruled it’s illegal. He can’t just with a [stroke] of the pen wipe away over half a trillion dollars in student loan debt,” DeVos told host John Catsimatidis on the podcast “Cats & Cosby.”
“It’s just transferring it to all those who didn’t take out student loans or those who faithfully made payments. It’s patently unfair. It’s patently illegal. The Supreme Court has ruled on that,” she added.
The Supreme Court ruled in June the Biden administration could not give up to $20,000 in student debt relief using the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act.
Shortly after the ruling, the president announced he would try an alternative path for debt forgiveness through the Higher Education Act (HEA). This route will take longer because it has to go through a negotiated rulemaking process, so little is known about how much relief could be given and who would qualify for it.
Biden “continues to try to buy these votes by coming up with another scheme. … It sounds really good to say, ‘I’m going to forgive your student debt.’ But it’s not forgiving anything. It’s already a loan made by the federal government. Somebody has to pay for it,” DeVos said.
It is unclear how much the new plan would cost, but Biden’s old student debt relief plan through the HEROES Act was estimated to cost more than $400 billion if it went through.
“[It is] patently unfair to the millions of people who faithfully repaid on their student loans. People aren’t stupid. They’re figuring out that this is nothing but a blatant vote ploy on the part of President Biden,” DeVos added.
The remarks come after a recent survey showed young people are blaming Republicans and the Supreme Court for the lack of debt relief as they are about to begin repaying their student loans for the first time in three years.