Hypocritical Conservatives Loved PPP Loan Forgiveness But Hate Student Loan Forgiveness
The Right wants it both ways on PPP loans and student loans, insisting it was fine for the government to forgive pandemic loans to businesses but terrible if it does the same with college loans to ordinary people. None of its arguments make any sense.
Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who slammed Joe Biden’s announced student debt cancellation, had $482,321 in PPP loans forgiven. (Gage Skidmore / Flickr)
Marjorie Taylor Green had $183,504 of PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loans forgiven. Matt Gaetz had $482,321 forgiven. Oh, and their fellow Republican congressmen Markwayne Mullin, Kevin Hern, and Mike Kelly all had PPP debts ranging from just under $1 million to $1.4 million wiped clean. But all five, along the rest of the conservative movement, reacted to Joe Biden’s (needlessly limited) action on student loans by preaching the immorality of forgiving other people’s debts.
When the White House Twitter account had some fun documenting the obvious hypocrisy of politicians who’d taken out massive loans on behalf of their businesses and had that forgiven begrudging ordinary people the forgiveness of $10,000 of student debt, a new conservative talking point emerged. The Right now claims that forgiving PPP loans is nothing like forgiving student loans because business-owners had “no choice” but to take PPP loans — while high school seniors who wanted a college education were being irresponsible if they took out loans they wouldn’t be able to repay.
That’s obvious nonsense. Any reasonable argument you can make for forgiving PPP loans would apply with at least as much force to forgiving student loans.
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