Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts told Newsmax on Friday that he and almost two dozen other Republican governors who signed a letter to President Joe Biden opposing his student loan forgiveness plan "felt it was necessary to respond to the president's plan because it's fundamentally unfair."
Ricketts said on "National Report" that "if you look, about 16% to 17% of Americans have student loans, which means that … you're not canceling this debt. [It] means the taxpayers are paying the debt. Somebody still has to pay it.
"It's just not the people who got the benefit of the education. It's the rest of the taxpayers."
He added: "If you look at who actually has this debt, the top 20% of income earners have about $3 in student loan debt for every $1 in student loan debt of the bottom 20%, and if you've got more than $50,000 in debt, you likely [received a] graduate degree. Which means that really what you're talking about is doctors, lawyers, professors are getting their student loan paid off by hourly workers, blue-collar workers, and that's just fundamentally unfair."
Ricketts said: "Add the fact the president doesn't really have the authority to be able to do this, it's going to cost $600 billion. This is only you can only do that through an act of Congress.
"Even [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi had said that the president doesn't have the power to do that. So the president is again way off base, and this is going to drive further inflation. It's just bad policy. It's unfair."