Retiring Democrat Senator on Student Loan Forgiveness: 'I Worry About This'

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and one of the longest serving senators in history, is making the rounds of cable talk shows before he retires to promote his new book, called “The Road Taken.”

On Fox News Tuesday night, Leahy was asked about President Joe Biden’s anticipated announcement today that he will forgive $10,000 student loans for people making $125,000 or less:

“Well, I worry about this,” Leahy told Bret Baier:

“You know, I went through college and law school. I had student loans. I paid off the last student loan a couple months after I was sworn into the U.S. Senate. It was a 10-year loan. And I never could have done it without that.

“But some of these costs are getting far too high, and especially in for-profit colleges. And I don’t know if you have a means test or what, but I worry that we say to colleges, charge whatever you want, and we are going to forgive the loan.

“The University of Vermont, my own state, the president has kept the tuition the same for several years. It’s been a lot of work with inflation to do that, but he has done it. And I want colleges to look and say, can we really justify some of these costs? I don’t think they can.”

Baier asked Leahy, “Do you worry from your side of the aisle that there will be people that say, I paid off my loans or people that don’t go to college saying, why do I forgive this?”

“No question about it. I’m already hearing that from Vermonters,” Leahy said:

“And I don’t know what the answer is. I would have loved it when I finished college and law school if somebody had paid off all my debts. But I realized I was committed to them and I had to pay them off.

“But that was at a time when college cost nowhere near — even in real dollars, nowhere near what it costs today. I think the whole cost is spiraling out of control, and it’s just discouraging a lot of young people from going to college.”

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