- GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx and Sen. Richard Burr criticized student-loan relief in a recent opinion piece.
- They wrote plans for debt forgiveness are just a way for Biden to win votes at the midterms.
- Biden recently said a decision on student-loan relief will be made in the upcoming weeks.
President Joe Biden appears to be inching closer and closer to broad student-loan relief, and Republicans aren't holding back on what they think about it.
Last week, top GOP members on the House and Senate education committees — Rep. Virginia Foxx and Sen. Richard Burr — wrote an opinion piece for Fox News criticizing the continued pause on student-loan payments, along with potential plans to cancel student debt broadly. As they have argued in the past, the two lawmakers said continuing to give relief to student-loan borrowers as the pandemic subsides is unnecessary, and will cost taxpayers and exacerbate inflation.
"By caving to progressives, he is breaking his promise to over 100 million taxpayers without student debt who are subsidizing this boondoggle," Foxx and Burr wrote.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Uncle Joe is banking on the left's ideologues to save Democrats from a disastrous midterm election, taxpayers be damned," they added.
Last week, Biden told reporters following a speech that while he is not considering $50,000 in relief for every federal borrower — an amount many progressives have pushed for — he will make a decision on any broad student-loan forgiveness in the next few weeks. This comes after he extended the pause on student-loan payments for his fourth time in early April, through August 31, amid pressure from Democratic lawmakers but intense pushback from Republicans.
As Insider previously reported, the GOP has become increasingly vocal on student-loan relief. Foxx has consistently expressed concerns with the economic impact of continuing to pause payments, citing the $150 billion cost the pause has had so far, and her colleagues like Sens. Mitt Romney and Tom Cotton called debt forgiveness a "bribe" to buy votes at the midterms.
Forgiving student debt would be popular among voters. A recent Data for Progress poll found that if Biden fulfilled his $10,000 student-loan forgiveness campaign pledge, 45% of respondents would be somewhat or much more likely to turn out to vote in key battleground states.
And a number of Democratic lawmakers have warned of defeat at the polls should Biden fail to act on student debt — Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren recently told the LA Times that canceling student debt is a key way for Democrats to attract younger voters.
"The idea that young people today should be shackled by debt just to try to get an education so they can try to compete is fundamentally wrong," Warren said.
As of now, it's unclear what relief Biden will end up implementing — recent reports suggest it will be closer to $10,000 in forgiveness with income thresholds — but Republicans have made quite clear they think any further relief is a bad idea.