Kevin O’Leary lambasted the idea of student debt forgiveness as “un-American” during an appearance Wednesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” describing the concept as “policy born in hell.”
In April, President Joe Biden said that he was “considering dealing with some debt reduction.”
Citing three unidentified individuals, the Washington Post reported last week that the administration plans to nix $10,000 of student debt per person — the outlet said that two of the individuals noted that the plan would restrict loan cancellation to individuals who earned less than $150,000 the prior year, or less than $300,000 for spouses filing jointly.
According to Reuters, White House spokesperson Vedant Patel noted, “No decisions have been made yet. But as a reminder, no one has been required to pay a single dime of student loans since the president took office.”
O’Leary, who is widely known for his appearances as an investor on the television show “Shark Tank,” unleashed scathing criticism of the concept of student loan cancellation, noting that it would be unfair.
“This is a really, really bad idea,” O’Leary said, asking, “who is advising Biden? Who are his closest advisors? What planet are they on? It’s not the planet earth.”
He also said that the policy would be “manna from heaven” for the GOP.
“Forgiving student debt is the worst policy idea I have ever heard. If you are going to spend anything on #education give it to teachers and pay them more. A good teach has tremendous impact on society,” O’Leary tweeted.
Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke has also said that nixing student debt would be unfair.
“It would be very unfair to eliminate. Many of the people who have large amounts of student debt are professionals who are going to go on and make lots of money in their lifetime. So why would we be favoring them over somebody who didn’t go to college, for example?” Bernanke said, according to the New York Times.