White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice could not answer questions about whether President Joe Biden’s student loan debt forgiveness will lead to colleges raising tuition in the future.
Some critics of Biden’s plan have claimed that the monthly cap on payments the president will institute would allow colleges to charge more upfront per semester without driving borrowers into default.
TOP OBAMA ECONOMIC ADVISER TORCHES BIDEN’S STUDENT LOAN DEBT RELIEF
Rice would not say if the administration is specifically designing action to prevent schools from increasing tuition and noted that, at the president’s direction, the Department of Education will start publishing lists of schools that seek to abuse the system.
“We have to see, right. We have to see,” Jean-Pierre said in response to a similar question later in the briefing. “This is something that the Department of Education is going to look into, in particular with, when you talk about colleges potentially raising prices, that’s something that the Department of Education is looking at and is going to crack down on.”
A large number of Republicans have vocally attacked Biden’s Wednesday announcement, but Jason Furman, a Harvard economics professor and the chairman of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, was one of the lone figures on the Left to criticize Biden’s proposal.
“There are a number of other highly problematic impacts including encouraging higher tuition in the future, encouraging more borrowing, creating expectations of future debt forgiveness, and more,” he tweeted Wednesday afternoon. “Most importantly, everyone else will pay for this either in the form of higher inflation or in higher taxes or lower benefits in the future.”
Most importantly, everyone else will pay for this either in the form of higher inflation or in higher taxes or lower benefits in the future. I did a thread on this last night but given the new announcement you need to double everything in it. https://t.co/CJ7aPYyAw3
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) August 24, 2022
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You can watch Wednesday’s briefing in full below.
