Kim Guilfoyle Scoffs at Landmark Student Debt Relief Plan, Linking Financial Strife with 'Laziness'
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Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images Kimberly Guilfoyle
Conservative media personality Kimberly Guilfoyle, 53, is less-than-happy about the government pulling student loan borrowers out of financial crisis, saying that indebted Americans have no interest in doing their part to help society.
Appearing during a Newsmax segment Monday night that misrepresented the details of President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan, Guilfoyle said, "Enough of this nonsense! I mean, paying off loans for people that want to have some bizarre basket-weaving degree, and they want all of us ... hardworking men and women, to subsidize their laziness and their inability to even try and contribute to society."
Commenting further, she said, "It's unfair, it's un-American, and it's not the way that this country should work."
Elsewhere in the interview with far-right TV host Rob Schmitt, Guilfoyle — identified on the program as the national finance chair for MAGA Again — called the United States under President Biden a communist "welfare state," using charged language to discount assistance programs and saying, "We want capitalism back."
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Just two days before Guilfoyle's TV appearance, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram to explain why viewing targeted government assistance programs as a waste of money is a harmful and "selfish" perspective.
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: Not every program has to be for everybody," Ocasio-Cortez, 32, wrote, mentioning other programs that use taxpayer dollars to benefit specific populations — like first-time homeowner benefits, Medicare for senior citizens, and roads that even public transit users help fund through taxes.
"Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn't impact you. That doesn't make it bad," she continued. "I am sure there are certainly other things that student loan borrowers' taxes pay for. We can do good things and reject the scarcity mindset that says doing something good for someone else comes at the cost of something for ourselves."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, an early proponent of canceling student loan debt for struggling Americans, has presented a different perspective that also supports Biden's forgiveness plan, referring to student debt as "a stain on who we have become as a nation" in a recent interview with PEOPLE.
"Higher ed is becoming a way to further divide people economically instead of bring them together. If somebody can afford to write a check to go to college, if they come from a family that can pay for it, they've got a pretty smooth sailing path ahead for their place in America's middle class," Warren, 73, said. "For anyone whose family can't afford to write a check to send them to college, the path forward is through debt hell."
"This is very much about helping America's working class and middle class," Warren explains. "When the cancellation is finished, half of all Latino borrowers will be completely debt free, and 45% of all African American borrowers won't owe another penny. This is an important step in helping close the racial wealth gap in America."
