Dominic Pino of National Review Online assesses one Democrat’s recent message praising President Biden.
“Just got a call to let me know my student debt has been canceled. This is why elections matter. Thanks @JoeBiden.”
Ben Kamens, the communications director for Representative Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio), posted that on X today. It included a picture of the letter he received from Nelnet, the company that serviced his student loans. The letter begins, “Congratulations! The Biden-Harris administration has forgiven your federal student loan(s) listed below with Nelnet in full.”
Kamens’s two loans were taken out in 2010. The original principal balances were $2,750 and $5,500. Again, he posted this on X for the entire world to see.
As the text of his message demonstrates, he’s not the least bit ashamed about the fact that he, a grown man and college graduate with a full-time job, was apparently unable to repay debt with a principal of $8,250 over a span of 14 years.
I don’t know Kamens’s life story, and there could be some kind of hardship in his life that made that difficult to accomplish. It is nonetheless true that lots of people with their own hardships are able to repay debt of that size according to the agreement that they made when they took it out, because they prioritize paying back their debts.
But Kamens did not, and now his political party has decided to give him taxpayer money instead. As an added bonus, the letter notes that because of the American Rescue Plan Act, the balance of the loans forgiven is not considered taxable income at the federal level. Democrats want to step up tax enforcement with a larger IRS, but they wrote into law that their special one-time income for people who didn’t pay back their student debt, a category that includes White House staff members in addition to their congressional staff, is tax-free.
