In a social media post this week, former “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe explained why he is adamantly against one of the biggest bright ideas of the left coming out of Washington these days – to not only make college free but to extend full student loan forgiveness for everyone with outstanding debt from their own college tuition days.
To make his point, Rowe quoted from a recent article in National Review, which pointed out that the Democratic Party is no longer the blue-collar party of old.
“Democrats have become the party of moneyed urban and suburban professionals, and, on the matter of college loans, progressives are happy to see the rich get richer as Americans of more modest means subsidize relatively high-income Democratic households,” the article read.
In his post, Rowe said that many of his followers are surprised by his resistance to student loan forgiveness, given how passionately he’s spoken out about the insane cost of a college education.
“Well, for the record, I do not support student loan forgiveness,” he said. “My reasons for opposing student loan forgiveness are not a secret. I’ve written at length on this page about the fundamental unfairness of doing such a thing – especially to the millions of Americans who have paid their college debts, and sacrificed much to do so. I’ve also said that forgiving student debt would send a terrible message to the very same universities that already gouge their customers with sky-high tuition. Tuition will never come back to earth, if we bail out those who borrowed more than they could repay.”
Rowe then noted that even publications like The New York Times have pointed out that a full-scale debt relief program of the sort touted by Elizabeth Warren would “disproportionately benefit middle- to upper-class college graduates – especially those who attended elite and expensive institutions, and people with lucrative professional credentials like law and medical degrees.”
In other words, the ones who have already added more than a million dollars to their lifetime earnings thanks to their degrees will now rely on a bailout from the federal government. Or, to put it more succinctly, the American taxpayers.
Rowe said that none of this meant that he was without sympathy for the man or woman struggling to pay off their student loans.
“You were quite possibly sold a bill of goods,” he said. “You were very likely pressured by your friends, your parents, or your guidance counselor, to attend the ‘right’ school. You were perhaps a victim of this persistent, pernicious, and preposterous push to peddle a four-year degree to every person with a pulse, and for that, you have my sympathy. But that’s not my fault. Nor is it the fault of the American people. The fault belongs to you, and so does the debt.”
