by David Beasley
The vast majority of Hill staff could fall under President Joe Biden’s qualification threshold for his loan forgiveness plan, making them eligible to receive a minimum of $10,000 in debt repayment. According to salary data, nearly 91% of Sen. Raphael Warnock’s staff could qualify.
This percentage is merely an estimation as there are several unknown factors, including whether or not the staffers went to college, if they took out loans, if they still have loans or if they had a full-ride scholarship, as well as the total household income of Hill staffers.
“This is ultimately a program designed to directly benefit the pocketbooks of affluent, urban, college-educated elites, who now comprise a significant swathe of the Democratic Party’s voting base,” Jack McPherrin, research editor at The Heartland Institute, wrote in an opinion piece, “Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Scheme Continues Democrats’ War Upon America” published on RedState.
Salary data retrieved from LegiStorm.com shows that an estimated 90.7% of Warnock’s staff could be eligible for the president’s student loan forgiveness plan. This translates to $490,000 going directly to the staff of the U.S. senator.
Since a vast majority of Capitol Hill staff make under the $125,000 threshold set by the White House, nearly 2,000 House and Senate employees, some of who are already enrolled in a student loan repayment assistance program offered to staff, could benefit from the $10,000 in federal debt cancellation and another $10,000 for those that were Pell Grant recipients, Politico reports.
Warnock, who is up for re-election in November, supports Biden’s debt forgiveness plan and actually advocates for even more forgiveness than what’s in the current plan.
“In Georgia, the average student loan debt is over $40,000—creating financial burdens that weigh down millions of families,” the senator said on Twitter last year. “I’m proud to join my colleagues in calling on @POTUS to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt for borrowers, helping push our country toward economic and racial justice.”
As reported by Fox News, Biden announced Aug. 24 that for borrowers making less than $125,000 a year, he will cancel $10,000 of federal student loan debt. For borrowers who attended college on Pell Grants, Biden’s forgiveness extends up to $20,000 in student loan debt. In addition, Biden has extended pandemic-era payment freezes through the end of December.
Biden campaigned on cancelling student debt.
“I’m going to eliminate your student debt if you come from a family [making less] than $125,000 and went to a public university,” Biden said on the 2020 campaign trail, Forbes reported. “I’m going to make sure everyone gets $10,000 knocked off of their student debt in response to economic hardships caused by the pandemic.”
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Photo “Raphael Warnock” by Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock.
