Personal-finance author and radio host Dave Ramsey has strong feelings about this week’s student-loan forgiveness news. After President Biden announced on August 24 that student-loan debts of between $10,000 and $20,000 will be eliminated for Americans making less than $125,000 per year, Ramsey addressed what he calls an “obvious political ploy.”
Ramsey, whose messaging focuses on debt-free living, admits having mixed reactions to the news. On one hand, he says, “We’re happy for you” if your debt will be erased, because we “want good things for you.” Yet Ramsey also empathizes with people “who paid off their loans and feel screwed,” saying, “We’re as pi–ed off as you are.”
Ramsey rails against student loans themselves, calling them “evil” and the industry “dumber than crap.” If these loans “are so bad that you have to cancel them,” he asks, “then why are you continuing to make them? You should at least stop making them before we start forgiving them.”
Dave Ramsey: Student-Loan Plan Is an Economic ‘Burden’
On “The Ramsey Show,” the Dave Ramsey criticizes the heavy “burden” this plan adds to the U.S. economy. “It’s all put on the backs of your grandchildren,” he says of the estimated $300 billion cost. “It’s all added to the deficit.”
Of Biden, Ramsey says, “The president is strutting around, proud that he just added to the American…burden.” The administration is “economically failed,” he says, calling it the “greatest failure” economically since Jimmy Carter. Ramsey also criticizes “this slide toward socialism” that’s “out of control.”
Ramsey says he expects legal challenges to the debt-relief plan, which he calls an “obvious political ploy.” Although it was a campaign promise of Biden’s, it took 18 months to fulfill, Ramsey notes. “The Biden administration is doing this to get your attention and make you love them, because the midterms are coming up,” he says. It’s “a hail Mary to try to get back in the [good] graces of voters.”
Rachel Cruze to Caller: ‘Write a Check and Pay It off’
On this week’s shows, Ramsey was joined by his daughter, author Rachel Cruze. In response to a caller who asks whether she should continue paying off student loans or accept the debt relief, Cruze says, “Write a check and pay it off. Don’t wait.”
Then Cruze addresses the mixed emotions, saying, “I think the heart behind [the plan] is relief.” Yet, she adds, there’s a “personal responsibility” component. “The idea of taking money from the government when you have it,” she explains, “that doesn’t sit well with me.”
