Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said President Joe Biden‘s latest effort to forgive billions of dollars worth of student loans was “wrong” and that “borrowers should be responsible for paying off their debts,” according to a post on X, formerly Twitter.
On Wednesday, the Education Department said that it had approved a total of about $5 billion student debt to more than 80,000 borrowers.
The latest announcement brought the Biden administration’s total debt cancellation to borrowers to $132 billion for over 3.6 million Americans, the White House said.
Johnson said on Wednesday evening that the move did not “cancel” or “forgive” student loan debt.
“The Biden Administration’s latest student debt transfer does not ‘cancel’ or ‘forgive’ a penny of student loan debt,” Johnson wrote on X. “Instead, President Biden is once again asking hard-working taxpayers to foot the bill for the loans of well-off graduates. This is not only unfair, it is wrong. Borrowers should be responsible for paying off their debts.”
Newsweek contacted the White House via email for comment on Thursday morning.
Student loan repayments restarted in September, with borrowers having to pay interest on their debt while the actual loan reimbursements resumed in October following a pause during the COVID-19 pandemic.
