ST. PAUL, Minn. — Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann criticized a directive by President Barack Obama to ease student-loan debt as an “abuse of power” that will give borrowers an incentive to dodge their debt.
The candidates reacted Thursday to a decision Obama announced a day earlier to cap required payments for some college-loan borrowers and forgive payments for others after 20 years. He used executive authority to accelerate a law that wasn’t supposed to go into effect until 2014.
“I believe it is abuse of power from the executive to impose, via an executive order, a wholesale change in the student loan,” Bachmann said during an education forum in New York put on by the College Board and News Corp.
The loan breaks, she said, could push costs onto other taxpayers, creating a “moral hazard.”
“There is a morality in keeping our financial promises, and I don’t think we should push that off onto the taxpayer,” she said. “The individual needs to repay and be responsible for repaying their student-loan debt.”
Another GOP candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, also took a dim view of Obama’s action, calling it a “Ponzi scheme.”
