WATCH: Joe Biden Bluntly Shuts Down Town Hall Questioner Asking for $50k in Student Loan Forgiveness

Tommy ChristopherFeb 17th, 2021, 11:01 am
 

President Joe Biden was comically blunt with a CNN town hall questioner who asked him how he plans to make $50,000 student loan forgiveness happen.

The President took questions from socially-distanced audience members at Tuesday night’s CNN Presidential Town Hall With Joe Biden, including a woman named Joycelyn Fish.

Moderator Anderson Cooper introduced her as “a Democrat from Racine” and “the director of marketing for a community theater.”

“Student loans are crushing my family, friends, and fellow Americans,” Ms. Fish began, to which Biden interjected “Me too,” and added, “You think I’m kidding” when she laughed.

“The American Dream is to succeed,” Fish continued. “But how can we fulfill that dream when debt is many people’s only option for a degree? We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed. We need at least a $50,000 minimum. What will you do to make that happen?”

Without missing a beat, Biden replied “I will not make that happen.”

The President then delivered a lengthy response that included many of his past objections to large student debt forgiveness, via executive order or otherwise, and his own plans: that “everyone should be able to go to community college for free,” that “any family making under $125,000 whose kids go to a state university they get into, that should be free as well,” to “provide for changing the existing system now for debt forgiveness if you engage in volunteer activity,” that debtors “can work off that debt by the activity you have, and you cannot be charged more than X percent of your take-home pay.”

Biden also ticked through his children’s educations and student loan obligations, and his plans to support HBCUs.

The president concluded by saying “I do think that, in this moment of economic pain and strain, that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulated, number one. And number two, I’m prepared to write off a $10,000 debt, but not 50. Because I don’t think I have the authority to do it by signing the pen.”

The exchange did not endear Biden to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who posted the clip and expressed her disagreement on Twitter:

1. Who cares what school someone went to? Entire generations of working class kids were encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong.

2. Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both.

Recently, Sen. Elizabeth Warren(D-MA), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) held a press conference in support of a resolution calling on Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in student loan debt using executive authority. The resolution has 15 co-sponsors.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

Tags: