(PatriotWise.com)- Ethics concerns were raised after Republicans discovered that White House staffers hold up to $5 million in student loans. They believe that the staffers might be using their debt to encourage the president to make moves targeting student loan forgiveness, which would be a conflict of interest.
More than 30 White House staffers reportedly held more than $100,000 in student debt, including the press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. 20% of the staffers who owed more than $10,000 had to report their debt, with just one student reporting to owe between $500,000 and $1 million.
How does one even get to that point?
Two ranking Republican representatives leading the investigation, Rep. James Comer, of the Committee on Oversight and Reform and Rep. Virginia Foxx, of the Committee on Education and Labor, wrote a letter to the Office of Government Ethics Director Emory Rounds about the potential conflict of interest.
“Presumably, political appointees with outstanding student loans are included in the
reported student loan forgiveness scheme the Biden administration is planning to undertake, thereby raising concerns of whether appointees with conflicts of interest pushed student loan forgiveness to receive a financial windfall,” they wrote.
Biden plans to “cancel” debt of up to $10,000, qualifying individuals who earn up to $150,000, as well as married couples who earn up to $300,000. This would significantly shift the burden of repaying these loans onto taxpayers, at a time where the average citizen can barely afford gas or the rising prices of food, although no definitive plans have been announced just yet.
The average White House staffer reportedly earns around $95,000, way below the cutoff.
The Republicans’ letter calls this scheme an “unjust transfer of wealth” from hardworking Americans to “highly educated upper-middle-class graduates who borrowed from taxpayers to earn their degree.”
Some might call this description of “highly educated” to be sarcastic given the fact that the only thing that makes these upper-middle-class students “educated” is not their degrees in gender studies, but that they managed to get others to pay for it.
Less than a quarter of Americans hold student debt, according to census data. About 1 in 8 people, 13%, in the U.S. carry student debt. That’s roughly 43 million citizens who owe $1.59 trillion in federal loans. The largest portion of the debt, $600 billion, is carried by those aged 35-49 years old, including parents who took out loans for their children.
