'It is un-American': Kevin O'Leary slams Biden administration for 'unfair' erasure of $7.7B student loans

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Kevin O'Leary, host of 'Shark Tank' and prominent businessman, also known as Mr Wonderful, attacked the Biden administration for its most recent round of student debt relief after the White House declared it would wipe out debt for over 160,000 borrowers. "I hate this, I really, really hate this," O'Leary said Wednesday, May 22 on 'The Story' podcast.

"This is a very difficult pill to swallow for people that understand when you borrow money you have to pay it back," he added. "Particularly, for those who do not understand why a selected group of individuals in history get a free ride. This is so un-American, it is so unfair, it is so inconsistent with the values we made people for over 100 years understand."

$7.7B federal student loans will be erased, says Education Department

The Education Department announced that it will erase $7.7 billion in federal student loans, marking a total of $167 billion in student debt forgiveness for nearly 5 million Americans through several programs.

Kevin O'Leary thinks student loan erasure will burden taxpayers

According to Mr Wonderful, it is unfair that while some people have worked hard to pay off their loans, taxpayers are left with the burden of supporting wealthy college graduates.

"I am a taxpayer, I don't like this," O'Leary said. "I don’t think it is fair. It is un-American in a sense that there are many people who have already paid back their student loans and cohorts in the past, those in the future that still may not get this. People that never got to go to college because they figured they could not afford it, it is so unfair."

"Number two," he continued. "There is no way this is not inflationary. This is free money from a helicopter when we are trying to tame inflation. This just makes it worse."

Three categories of borrowers are covered in the latest handout

As per the White House, the most recent handout addresses three groups of borrowers: People receiving Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), people signed up for President Biden's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan who are also eligible for its shortened time-to-forgiveness benefit and people receiving forgiveness on income-driven repayment (IDR) as a result of fixes made by the administration.

To reduce student loan debt, the Biden administration has finalized new regulations to shield borrowers from "career programs that leave graduates with unaffordable debts or insufficient earnings" and increased the maximum Pell Grant by $900.

"Today's announcement comes on top of the significant progress we’ve made for students and borrowers over the past three years," Biden said in a statement on Wednesday, May 22.

"That includes providing the largest increases to the maximum Pell Grant in over a decade; fixing Public Service Loan Forgiveness so teachers, nurses, police officers, and other public service workers get the relief they are entitled to under the law; and holding colleges accountable for taking advantage of students and families," he added.

"And last month, I laid out my Administration’s new plans that would cancel student debt for more than 30 million Americans when combined with everything we’ve done so far," he concluded.

Kevin O'Leary on why the latest round of handouts won't work

O'Leary said if political motivations are behind the latest round of handouts, "it will not work." "This cohort in the late twenties and early thirties, they have the propensity to vote the least," he observed, per Fox News.

"But also, think about the people who look at this and say it is unfair, and politically say I don’t like this, and I’m an independent and this is the fourth time I think we had our forgiving debt and I don’t understand why these people got their debt paid back where nobody else did," he said. 

"And we teach everybody in America, you have to pay back your debt but not you, 5 million people for the first time ever and maybe the last? You 5 million, you’re off the hook? Why? Why is this fair…?" he went on. "This make a lot of independent voters pretty unhappy, like I am right now."

In addition to the loans cleared under IDR, the SAVE Plan, and PSLF, the Biden administration has also approved $28.7 billion for more than 1.6 million borrowers who were "cheated by their schools, saw their institutions precipitously close, or are covered by related court settlements" and $14.1 billion for more than 548,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability.

Kevin O'Leary's student loan remarks draw criticism from netizens

Internet users bashed the entrepreneur after he criticized Biden's student loan handout. One user wrote, "Kevin O'Leary is FILTHY rich and complaining about poor people getting a break. He can suck a bag of D***s." Another added, "Coming from a man whose wife killed somebody while driving drunk. 'still waters run deep.'"

"Who cares what he says. I don't see him paying off student loan debt," commented one user, and another explained, "It's not a handout. It's interest relief from predatory loans."

"But I'm sure that he doesn't really, really hate all the tax cuts and money given to big corporations and millionaires by the previous administration..," another individual chimed in.

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