Billionaire Mark Cuban confronted fellow billionaire Bill Ackman online Saturday after criticizing President Joe Biden’s student loan debt cancellation plan.
Biden recently canceled the student loan debt of an additional 277,000 people, bringing the total number of Americans approved for debt forgiveness during his administration to 4.3 million. The latest debt relief comes to those enrolled in the federal government’s Savings for a Valuable Education Plan (SAVE) or those approved for relief under the Income-Driven Repayment Plan and Public Service Loan Forgiveness amendments. Applicable.
read more: Latest information and frequently asked questions about student loan forgiveness
According to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), 7.5 million borrowers are currently enrolled in SAVE plans. This is an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for low- and moderate-income individuals. Those who were on the REPAYE plan were automatically enrolled in her SAVE plan, which launched last August.
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Biden’s original plan, a $400 billion proposal to cancel or reduce student loan debt, but a majority of the justices said it needed approval from Congress.
Republicans strongly oppose student loan cancellation, saying it’s unfair to people who have already paid off their loans or didn’t go to college because they thought they couldn’t afford such huge debts.
“Student loan forgiveness sounds great for borrowers who are overburdened with high-interest debt that they can’t repay. The problem is that people who didn’t attend college or whose parents saved their allowances The subsidy appears to be given primarily to wealthy families at the cost of burdening families,” said Ackman, founder and CEO of hedge fund management firm Pershing Square Capital. He said, “It should be illegal for a president to buy votes by transferring money from certain citizens to people he thinks are likely to support him in an election.” the executive and vocal critic of Biden wrote Saturday on X, formerly Twitter.
In response to Ackman’s remarks, Cuban also took to social media platforms to point out former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts during his presidency. “Like Trump used tax cuts for people like you and me?” he asked.
newsweek Mr. Biden and Mr. Cuba were contacted for comment via email.
![mark cuban](https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/2377845/mark-cuban.jpg?w=1200&f=f52db2fc9e1a686be33721bb22f452f0)
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President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 during his presidential term. The law lowers most of the seven income tax brackets, including the top tax rate, and is scheduled to expire in December 2025. An analysis of the tax cuts by the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) concluded that nearly half of all income taxes would qualify for the cuts. The benefits of this law were given to individuals who earn more than $232,000 per year.
read more: 2023-2024 tax brackets and federal income tax rates
President Trump has billed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a stimulus tax cut that will benefit the middle and working classes who can pay for themselves. However, the deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion. Around the time Congress passed the tax cuts, an analysis by the Tax Policy Center predicted that the poorest people would receive the least proportional benefit, while the richest people would benefit more than everyone else.
The most profitable business groups in 2018 paid an effective tax rate of 11.3 percent, the lowest tax rate in decades, according to the nonprofit publication Capital & Main, and the new law requires This is almost half of the tax rate.
In another X post on Saturday, Cuban added: “Come on, businesses. Did the cuts pay for themselves? He said wages would go up after the cuts, but they didn’t. Widening income inequality when corporate taxes are almost non-existent.” When the pandemic hit, his egotistical tariffs, which refused to raise taxes or create any revenue, gave everyone money until they bought their votes with subsidies and nearly killed farmers against the pandemic. He said his reaction was slow, and the tests only showed an uptick. It’s the fact that tax cuts for people earning less than 60,000 are set to expire next year. ”
“Biden is far from perfect. That’s not what this is about. This is hypocrisy in that Trump wasn’t trying to buy votes as much as he could, like Biden is now. Biden is just smarter about how he does it. ” he concluded.
In a statement released by the White House in response to recent student loan debt cancellation, Biden said, “From day one of my administration, I will fight to make higher education a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity.” We made a promise: No matter how many times Republicans try to stop us, we will never stop working to cancel student debt.”
This is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to lower the nation’s collective student debt level, which currently stands at $1.6 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data.
The reversal comes after Congress ended more than three years of loan payment and interest moratoriums in June 2023 during the pandemic, with more than 28 million federal debtors making payments again in October 2023. This was done in response to the start.
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