Exclusive: Texas civil liberties group says student loan forgiveness will cost Latinos in long run

Around 48 million Americans have student loan debt totaling nearly $1.75 trillion. While President Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan sounds like a financial blessing to those struggling to make ends meet, Israel Ortega, national spokesperson for the Libre Initiative, urges Americans to consider the cost, because nothing in life is free.

“There’s no such thing as a free lunch and there’s no such thing as free money,” Ortega told ADN America in a telephone interview. “The money has to come from somewhere and in the government’s case, it comes from taxpayers.

During a press conference Wednesday at the White House, the president reminded the nation that the student loan payment freeze, previously enacted by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 during the pandemic, will end on Dec. 31.

He then announced a student loan debt payment relief program that will begin January 2023.

“Using the authority Congress granted the Department of Education, we will forgive $10,000 in outstanding federal student loans,” Biden said in his statement. “In addition, students who come from low-income families which allowed them to qualify to receive a Pell Grant will have their debt reduced $20,000.”

Ortega said student loan relief is a bad idea and a bad deal for Americans, especially low-income Americans who are already struggling with high inflation.

“It’s really reckless from a financial perspective,” Israel said.

Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas agreed, saying in a press release following Biden’s speech, “there is no way to ‘cancel’ student debt.”

“Someone will pay the price for this policy and the price is likely to be felt by every American in the form of even higher inflation,” Cruz added. “This administration is exceeding its legal authority and illegally burdening hard-working Americans with debts they didn’t take on themselves.”

According to a Brookings Institution analysis from January, 63% of student debt is incurred by non-Hispanic White households. Ortega said it is “incredibly unfair” for Americans, who took out student loans and paid them off or who never even went to college, to incur the debt of millions of people.

“I think, for Latinos, there’s an issue where we’re seeing Latinos who work in the service industry, for example, who didn’t go to college,” he added. “They’re going to be paying, through their tax dollars, for folks who took out extensive loans.”

The Libre Initiative is a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) non-profit organization whose goal is to keep the Hispanic community informed about what it truly means to have a free and open society, built on four pillars: economic prosperity, education, faith and family. They have been helping families already struggling with high inflation. One way they have been helping people is by helping them understand the real price of inflation.

“In a nutshell, it means that we are paying more for everyday goods and getting less,” he explained.

As of Friday, the national debt is more than $30.7 trillion. Market Watch estimates Biden’s plan could add an additional $440 to $600 billion in debt over the next 10 years.

“This announcement is a gut punch to every hard-working single mother who worked double shifts in order to pay for her own education, every parent who borrowed against their home to send their kid to college,” Cruz said. “Americans who sacrificed to make responsible financial decisions, and our nation’s veterans and service members who risked their lives to earn the G.I. Bill.”