‘Bad example’: Alabama senator reacts to Biden student loan plan

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - A bad example - that’s how Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., describes President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan. Tuberville says while some deserve it, most don’t.

The senator says it’s unfair to those who went to college and paid off their loans.

“I’m one of those, and there’s millions who have done the same thing. And, again, it goes back, $10,000 is a lot of money. But, it means more about being responsible for something. The way I look at it, because again, I dealt with kids all my life, at that age of learning how to handle your responsibility. And so it’s just a bad example for our country,” he said.

The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it is canceling up to $10,000 of federal student loans for borrowers who make less than $125,000 a year. For those within that income range and who also received a Pell Grant, the federal government’s plan would cancel up to $20,000 in federal loan debt.

Tuberville says American taxpayers will have to foot the $300 billion price tag.

He made the comments while in Montgomery ahead of a visit to the State Department of Agriculture.

“We’re 60% agriculture in the state. And for us to survive and thrive and grow, our farmers are our foresters or paper mills, all those have to be viable,” he added.

Tuberville has introduced a bill to prohibit members of the Chinese Communist Party from purchasing land in the United States.

“We do not need to sell our farmland, the land that should belong to Americans to foreign entities, not just the Chinese to other countries too because they like what we do here. They understand how we protect it. And we’re conservationists, plus China is one of our adversaries.”

Tuberville is working with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on legislation that would create a NIL federal law. He says they’ve heard from a number of representatives from college sports.

“What we want to do is put some rules together. For all 50 states, everybody does the same thing to make it equal. Because right now, it’s a free for all. Everybody’s doing different things. It’s not going to be fair, especially to the little guys. So hopefully in a month or so we have something put together we’ll see if we can get commissioners to agree. And push it out there and try to save college sports.”

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