A growing number of Americans who borrowed and paid off their student loans are angry about President Joe Biden’s near-trillion plan to pay off a chunk of current student debt.
BizPac Review noted:
On Wednesday, Biden announced that the federal government would cancel $10,000 student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 a year, an amount that rises to $20,000 for those with Pell grants, a write-off of debt that drew strong criticism, one which will benefit multiple White House staffers as well as many of the cultural elitist urban professionals who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.
Other than taxpayers – especially those who never attended college – who were justifiably outraged, it was a huge insult to many who did the right thing and made great sacrifices in order to meet their obligations and free themselves from the burden of debt.
Sherman and Cristina Merricks, who live in Florida and said they managed to pay off an eye-popping $190,000 in student debts in around two years, weren’t ecstatic over Biden’s announcement.
“It does make us a little angry because I know in the long run, it’s the taxpayers that are gonna have to pay for it,” Cristina Merricks said on Friday’s edition of FOX Business’ “Varney & Co.” on Fox Business.
“We had to make a ton of sacrifices,” Sherman Merricks said. “We actually started a second business as well, so more work… But those were a lot of long days, 14, 15-hour days to make sure that it happened.”
“Individually, I am happy if people get their student loans paid off $10,000 at a time, then I’m happy for them individually,” Cristina noted further. “But we all know that nothing is free and that there’s going to be repercussions.”
Meanwhile, Davidson Scott Dorgan, 37, a business economics graduate who borrowed to pay for his business education at the University of California-Santa Barbara, noted that he worked late at a car rental company to pay off his notes while his friends partied because he did not want to be burdened by the debt. He added that he’s not crazy about Biden’s giveaway, either.
“I was dead tired. I worked the late shift till 10 or 11 o’clock at night, closing the rental counter at Santa Barbara airport. Working through school and summer for two years, missing out on a lot of fun, life, and partying. I was just trying to do the responsible thing and get my career going,” he told FOX Business. “Apparently, I should have just taken another $20,000 in loans, not worked, partied, and had fun.”
A first-generation Ukrainian immigrant and U.S. military vet agreed.
“We have a strict motto in my family. We do not owe people anything. We don’t take out loans, and we live well below our means,” Marianna Davidovich, 48, said of her entrepreneurial family. “This student debt forgiveness situation is completely backwards. This is not what this country was built upon, not these principles.”
“This country is turning into what my parents ran away from in the former Soviet Union, a welfare state with long lines of people waiting for handouts and stamps,” she noted further.
“I am livid about it. I had to pay it, and I paid it back. Now I’m a senior, and I’m going to have to pay for somebody else’s degrees when they have probably gone to private schools. This just makes me sick,” said Lissa Pettenati, 64, a mother of three from upstate New York who teaches science told the Daily Mail.
She “borrowed $80,000 to get the Master’s degree she needed to teach in the state from St. Bonaventure University in the mid-1990s. During the two-year course, she cleaned the dormitories of other students to pay rent and feed her three young children. She went back to teaching upon graduation, repaying her debt within 12 years despite earning only a basic salary of some $40,000 per year. Her kids are now in their thirties, and she teaches in New Jersey,” the outlet reported, according to BPR.
“Instead of making those debt repayments for all those years, I could have been saving that money up for my own kids to go to college,” she said. “Biden is giving away money. Where are these millions and trillions of dollars coming from, and who’s going to pay for it in the end? This kind of debt is going to affect my grandchildren, all this money that’s being given away. I live on a farm in New Jersey now, and I’m ready for when the depression hits,” she said, a reference to an economic depression.
