When a reporter asked President Joe Biden on his way out of a press conference whether canceling the first $10,000 of student loan debt was “unfair to people who paid their student loans or chose not to take out loans,” Biden’s surprisingly sharp response was to mock right-wing hypocrisy on the issue. He turned around and asked the reporter, “Is it fair to people who do not in fact own multibillion-dollar businesses if these guys get all the tax breaks? Is that fair? What do you think?”

The contempt displayed by Biden for that question was appropriate and heartening to watch. As jarring as it may be to see the man who spent decades as the “senator from the credit card companies” doing his best Bernie Sanders impression, it was a good moment.

The Right’s hypocrisy on this has been blatant. As the White House Twitter has gleefully documented, a long list of Republicans now claiming to object in principle to people not having to pay off their loans in full took out generous Paycheck Protection Program (or PPP) loans and had far larger sums of money than $10,000 forgiven. And it really is ludicrous to see the same people who want us to be happy for corporate CEOs benefiting from massive tax breaks desperately trying to foment populist resentment against the “unemployed philosophy majors” or “slacker baristas” benefiting from student loan forgiveness.