President Biden, your student loan handout plan is the opposite of the Paycheck Protection Program

When public health officials and politicians locked down the economy in March 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden retreated to his basement. He was able to fundraise and campaign for president from the comfort of his Delaware beach house. Most Americans weren’t so fortunate. 

With the government forcing companies to close their doors, tens of millions of Americans were headed to the unemployment line, and millions of small businesses were headed for bankruptcy. That was an unacceptable outcome, which is why I worked with Democrats and Republicans to create the Paycheck Protection Program.

My plan was as straightforward as it was novel: to create a federal grant for small businesses to keep their employees on payroll. This payroll grant, structured deliberately as a forgivable loan, had one key condition: that 80 percent of the funds go to payroll. While some lobbyists (and even Democratic lawmakers) in Washington begged for a blank check to small businesses, I refused. This temporary program was intended to keep employees on payroll during what we were told would be a two-week lockdown to "slow the spread." 

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Two weeks turned into two months—and in some places, nearly two years. But through it all, the Paycheck Protection Program kept Main Street from going under. It was a stunning success. 

Don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of economists, who in May 2020 predicted the loss of 8 million jobs and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. Because of the initial $150 million in payroll grants, we not only avoided that catastrophic outcome but actually gained jobs––2.5 million of them.

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All together, the Paycheck Protection Program saved 55 million jobs, with an average business size of only 20 employees, including 6.1 million jobs in my home state of Florida. That is why former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Holtz-Eakin called it "the single most effective fiscal policy ever undertaken by the United States Government."

It was a temporary government program—a true rarity in American history—crafted to meet a particular moment. And it paid off. Main Street would have been decimated without it, as would the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans who work at small businesses.

BIDEN'S STUDENT LOAN HANDOUT PLAN IS NOT 'FORGIVENESS.' IT JUST ROBS THE POOR TO PAY THE RICH

President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan could not be more different, despite his lame attempts to draw similarities between the two. 

Let’s start with the obvious: federal student loans were just that, loans. The whole idea was that students would take the loans to pay for an education that would lead to a job that repays them (along with the massive interest accumulated).

There are other practical differences as well. The president is now asking those same small business owners and employees, most of whom never went to college, to shoulder the burden of college debt for others. 

Again, don’t just take my word for it. In the words of President Barack Obama’s chief economic adviser and Harvard economist Jason Furman: "Student loan relief is not free. Part of it [will] be paid for by the 87% of Americans who do not benefit but lose out from inflation."

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That is why it will do nothing for the people Democrats used to claim to protect: working families with minimal or nonexistent student debt. Unlike my payroll grants, forgiving student loan debt won’t create jobs, save small businesses, or reopen the American economy.

There are plenty of valid critiques of America’s higher education cartel, which is why I introduced legislation to remove exploitative interest rates attached to federal loans. But thus far, Democrats refuse to support my LOAN Act. That is because they are beholden to the higher education industrial complex. 

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Do they honestly think this radical and unlawful loan guarantee will cause Harvard, Yale, or Princeton to contain their spiraling costs? Of course not, and Democrats have no interest in making that happen. 

President Biden and his puppets in the media eagerly lie to the American people because the truth isn’t popular. 

This is a handout that primarily benefits the highly educated and already well-off, the laptop liberals and Marxist misfit activists who have never run a business, made payroll, or worried about something other than what pronouns to use. 

It shows where the Democrats’ priorities truly lie––and it’s not with working Americans.

Republican Marco Rubio represents Florida in the United States Senate.