One of the candidates running for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination still has about $18,000 to pay off in student loans.
Hint: He made more than $1 million in 2022.
Give up? The candidate in question is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to the New York Post.
A financial disclosure form filed Friday showed that DeSantis owes $18,628.66 in student loans.
The form shows that DeSantis had income from his $141,400.20 salary as governor and $1.25 million from Harper Collins, part of what the Post said was a $2 million advance on his February autobiography.
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The form noted that DeSantis has more than $1 million in the bank.
The student loan figure showed that DeSantis, who is 44, paid about $2,600 of what he owes last year from his studies at Yale University and Harvard Law, according to the Post.
The Twittersphere, of course, was hardly going to let the news pass without comment.
@GovRonDeSantis why not help out America..Pau off ypur student loan in full since ypu are a millionaire
Read “Ron DeSantis became a millionaire last year — but still owes student loans” on SmartNews: https://t.co/PXihmszbyf— Ginger Girl (@gingergirl1953) July 1, 2023
Articles coming out today saying “Ron is a Millionaire but still has student loans”. Such a farce.
If the DeSantis family has been millionaires for years and no house payment as Governor why does he still have student loans?
Ron is just another plastic created politician.
— Billy Rhodes 🇺🇸 (@Bill_Rhodes54) July 1, 2023
In May, DeSantis suggested colleges might need to take a hand in repaying the loans of individual students, according to CNN.
“If somebody defaults, the university should pick it up,” he said during a campaign trip to Iowa.
“If they were on the hook for it, they would make sure the curriculum was designed to produce people that can be very productive. You’d have a heck of a lot less gender studies going on,” he said.
Is DeSantis’ student loan position hypocritical?
Yes: 67% (2 Votes)
No: 33% (1 Votes)
In a South Carolina appearance in June, he indicated that his proposed loan policy would encourage colleges to offer programs that lead to employment, according to the Washington Examiner.
“One of the things we need to do to make sure that there’s more emphasis on practical education, not just support workforce programs, but at the universities, they should be responsible for defaulted student loan debt. If you produce somebody that can’t pay it back, that’s on you,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis has said he opposed President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which was shot down Friday by the Supreme Court.
“It’s very unfair to have a truck driver have to pay back a loan from somebody who got a Ph.D. in gender studies. That’s not fair. That’s not right,” he said at an August 2022 news conference, shortly after Biden announced the program, according to WEAR-TV.
“The people that should pay for it [are] not the American taxpayers,” DeSantis said. “It should be the universities [that] should be responsible for that. If they’re producing people that go deep into debt and their degree is not worth anything and they’re not able to make enough money to pay it back, then that’s on them. They’ve had an incentive to get more and more loans taken out and then put it in their pocket.”
