• Mitch McConnell called Biden's student-loan forgiveness "astonishingly unfair."
  • Elizabeth Warren pushed back, noting that McConnell went to college when tuition was $330 a year.
  • Many Republicans have been on the offense after Biden's $20,000 debt cancellation announcement.

Republican lawmakers have been quick to slam President Joe Biden's recent student-loan forgiveness announcement — and Democrats aren't letting it slide.

On Wednesday, Biden announced up to $20,000 in student-loan forgiveness for Pell Grant recipients making under $125,000 a year, and $10,000 for other federal borrowers within the same income cap. While this was a long-awaited policy that many Democrats were waiting for the president to implement, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was not thrilled with the expansive relief.

"President Biden's student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt," McConnell wrote in a statement. "This policy is astonishingly unfair."

But Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has been a vocal leader pushing Biden to approve $50,000 in student-loan forgiveness, didn't want to let McConnell off the hook for his comments.

"Senator McConnell graduated from a school that cost $330 a year," Warren wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "Today it costs over $12,000. McConnell has done nothing to fix it — and is irate that the President is stepping up to help millions of working Americans drowning in debt. He can spare us the lectures on fairness."

McConnell graduated from the University of Louisville in 1964, when annual tuition there cost $330. As has been the case with colleges across the country, tuition has surged and enrollment there now costs $12,000 a year, as Warren noted. While many other Republican lawmakers have joined McConnell in calling Biden's relief unfair to taxpayers and those who have paid off their debt, some of them have introduced legislation that attempts to address higher education costs without student-loan relief.

GOP lawmakers Virginia Foxx, Elise Stefanik, and Jim Banks introduced a bill that would end targeted loan forgiveness programs while prohibiting tuition and fees from exceeding the expected earnings of a certain program, among other things. And GOP Sen. Rick Scott on Monday introduced a bill that would "hold university administrators accountable for unacceptable skyrocketing price of education." 

But Warren and other Democrats believe student-loan forgiveness is the best first step toward confronting the costs of higher education. 

"20 million Americans will never have to make another student loan payment," Warren said. "Another 23 million Americans will have significant relief on their student loans. This is about helping America's middle class and providing relief to those who need it most."

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