NOTE: the following article is satire, not a statement of fact. Treat it as such.
Announcing yet another student debt forgiveness plan in a recent speech, President Biden announced that he was cancelling the debt of tens of thousands of people. Though some of the cancellations appeared justified, others were decidedly vaguer until Biden announced that they were a buy off plan. Beginning the speech, he said:
Today, my Administration approved debt cancellation for another 74,000 student loan borrowers across the country, bringing the total number of people who have gotten their debt cancelled under my Administration to over 3.7 million Americans through various actions.
Of the 74,000 borrowers approved for relief today, nearly 44,000 of them are teachers, nurses, firefighters and other individuals who earned forgiveness after 10 years of public service, and close to 30,000 of them are people who have been in repayment for at least 20 years but never got the relief they earned through income-driven repayment plans. My Administration is able to deliver relief to these borrowers – and millions more – because of fixes we made to broken student loan programs that were preventing borrowers from getting relief they were entitled to under the law.
Today’s announcement comes on top of all we’ve been able to achieve for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years. This includes: achieving the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program so that borrowers who go into public service get the debt relief they’re entitled to under the law; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the SAVE plan. Borrowers can go to studentaid.gov to apply. And, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on our student debt relief plan, we are continuing to pursue an alternative path to deliver student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible.
Then a member of the media shouted out, “But what about the other 30,000, Mr. President? You say 44 thousand are public servants and many of them have been trying to pay this debt off for a long time. But what about the remainder? Why them? Why now?”
Unfortunately for Team Biden, the president responded before they could cut him off. He said, “Well, Jack, look: the big issue is that these are people in swing counties in swing states. For the election, you see. So I need to win them over to win the election. Well, I need their votes, to put it simply. So we thought I could buy them off with this while cloaking it by also helping out teachers, and whoever. Then it’s good press and good politics. For me at least, haha.”
The reporter asked, “So it’s just a bribe?” Biden appeared poised to say “Oh yeah, Jack. For sure.” But before he could, Dr. Jill cut him off and led him off the stage by his arm, not letting him say another work into the microphone.