Ms. Greene has been a vocal critic of the president’s plan to forgive up to $10,000 in federal student loans, dismissing it as an unfair policy and a partisan ploy because Democrats “need votes in November.” “For our government to say, OK, your debt is completely forgiven, they obviously have an agenda for that,” she said in a recent appearance on Newsmax. “Votes are needed in November, so the timing is pure coincidence there as well. It’s completely unfair.” “Taxpayers across the country, taxpayers who never took out a student loan, taxpayers who pay their bills and maybe never went to college, just hard-working people, shouldn’t have to pay off the big student loan debt for some college student that she accumulated massive debt going to some Ivy League school,” he added. On Thursday, the White House noted in a tweet that Ms. Green herself received $183,504 in federal loans as part of the pandemic-inspired Paycheck Protection Program, which she used to fund her construction company, according to public records. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield added to the online row against Ms Green by posting a cheeky GIF of a student walking down the hall tossing his papers in the air. “We have scoured the White House Twitter feed and cannot find a single tweet condemning the acts of political terrorism committed against Congresswoman Green this week,” a spokesman for Ms Green’s office told The Independent, a possible reference to fake news. SWAT calls. turned against the Georgia legislature in recent weeks. “It’s a shame that Joe Biden and his media representatives continue to target MTG simply because he is outspoken against Democratic policies.” Ms. Green was not alone in being singled out by the White House for seemingly conflicting views on federal loan forgiveness. The Biden administration also noted that Republican critics of the student loan plan, such as Reps. Vern Buchanan, Markwayne Mullin and Kevin Hearn, had each been forgiven more than $1 million in PPP loans. The PPP was part of the Trump administration’s 2020 package of Covid stimulus bills, which passed with broad bipartisan support. Studies show that more money from the program went to business owners and high-income households, constituencies that are both lean Republican, than to lower-income workers, the intended beneficiaries of the initiative. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has railed against Mr. Biden’s comparatively more modest student loan forgiveness program, calling it a gift to elite Ivy League graduates with high debt. In fact, the loan initiative is specifically aimed at lower-income earners, making less than $125,000 a year, although the analysis shows that higher-income Americans, who have more student loan debt on average, will still be the main beneficiaries.
