Republicans have been lambasting the Biden administration’s plan to cancel massive amounts of federal student loan debt, but on Thursday, the White House fired back at several GOP lawmakers by saying that the Republican figures had benefitted from Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness.
The PPP program was meant to help buoy businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The official White House Twitter account retweeted a clip in which Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had described student loan cancellation as “completely unfair.”
“Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had $183,504 in PPP loans forgiven,” the White House tweeted.
The White House also targeted GOP Reps. Vern Buchanan of Florida, Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, and Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania.
In response to the White House, Mullin tweeted, “Another ignorant attack from a career politician who has never created a single job. 74 days before midterms, Joe Biden is targeting business owners for protecting their employees from government lockdowns. President Trump always supported American workers and job creators.”
The White House also retweeted a post in which Matt Gaetz of Florida appeared to ridicule the idea of the U.S. shelling out billions more to aid Ukraine — “Congressman Matt Gaetz had $482,321 in PPP loans forgiven,” the White House tweet declared.
“So it is now the White House’s position that if the government forces you to shut down your business and provides you just compensation to keep people employed, that’s the same thing as you failing to pay the college loans you voluntarily undertook. Geniuses,” tweeted conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, editor emeritus of the Daily Wire. “As long as the White House is targeting businessowners who were locked down and who used PPP to pay their employees, let’s find out how many top Democrats have student loans they’re about to pay off with your money,” he added in another post.
Jonah Goldberg, editor in chief of the Dispatch, tweeted, “The @WhiteHouse is going all in comparing PPP loan forgiveness to student debt forgiveness. It’s a terrible analogy because A) PPP loans were designed to be forgiven if conditions met & B) They were designed **by Congress.** What Biden is doing is lawless fiat *and* bad policy.”
Leon Wolf, managing editor of TheBlaze, tweeted, “Loans made by the government to bail out businesses that were forced by the government to temporarily close their doors are not the same as student loans, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.”