Former GOP presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee told Newsmax Friday that people who took out student loans to pay for their college education should be smart enough to know they have to pay the money back.
"If people are smart enough to go to an Ivy League school, they ought to be smart enough to read the loan agreement that they signed," Huckabee said during an appearance on Newsmax's "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE."
"These people agreed to borrow the money and to pay it back, and it was very explicit what the interest rate was and what the payments would be and how long the amortization schedule would take. And then somehow they said, 'Oh, heck, I can't pay this back because I got a gender studies degree and I'm working as a barista at Starbucks, and I'm making $7 an hour because nobody wants to hire me with my gender study degree.'"
"Sorry buttercup, but that's what you agreed to," he continued. "And some of us — chumps like me, that worked 40 hours a week while I went to college and paid my own way and did it without any borrowed money — the fact is now I feel like I should have just waited and called on old Uncle Sugar to come take care of me and to pay my loan off 45, 50 years after I went to college."
Huckabee then suggested that people who got a degree in a field such as gender studies and are now having difficulty finding a job "should have gotten a certificate in welding" or become "a journeyman electrician" or "a finished carpenter."
"They'd have made a lot more money," he said. "And here's the thing: The people who did go to learn to be a brick mason or perhaps an HVAC technician — who paid their expenses to get their certification and to get their training? They paid it.
"So this nonsense about somebody owes me something — the people that are out there as working stiffs, who are paying their own way, I don't think they've got any responsibility to have to pay for their schooling and to pay for somebody who never sat down and figured out if they could afford to go to the expensive college."
On Friday, President Joe Biden denounced a Supreme Court ruling that blocked his plan to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt and announced his administration would seek a new way to provide student loan relief.
In the wake of the 6-3 decision, Biden told reporters that he would pursue a remedy through the Higher Education Act, while also temporarily suspending the risk of default.
Huckabee said that "even Nancy Pelosi disagreed with him and said he couldn't do it" because she "had done something apparently Joe hadn't done — read the Constitution."
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