Lindsey Burke, an education expert at The Heritage Foundation think tank, is drawing attention to a report from the Government Accountability Office. That government watchdog found the DOE once estimated student loans would generate billions in income but now admits the federal government will lose billions instead.
“What’s $300 billion between friends?” Burke asks in her recent commentary about the Direct Student Loan program that was reviewed by the GAO.
"About 40% of the miscalculation is due to programmatic changes,” Burke tells AFN. “These are things the Biden administration continues to do, like these ongoing pauses to student loan repayments."
It is those student repayments that represent a very serious issue, Burke writes, because August 31 marks the end of another “pause” on student loan payments approved by President Joe Biden. The president could approve another “pause," and probably will, but the Biden administration is also under pressure by liberal lawmakers to approve a blanket loan forgiveness of at least $10,000 per borrower.
What does that mean to U.S. taxpayers? According to Burke, citing a Federal Reserve estimate, that “forgiveness” would cost taxpayers at least $321 billion.
That hit to taxpayers would come after the GAO found the Dept. of Education is losing $10 billion annually when it claimed taxpayers would watch the federal government make $114 billion a year.
