Democrat Tim Ryan confronted on CNN over opposition to Biden cancelling student loan debt

Ryan previously supported reforms to student loans and debt-free public college

Congressman Tim Ryan was confronted on CNN by State of the Union guest host Dana Bash on Sunday after he came out in opposition to Joe Biden’s decision to cancel some student loan debt for millions of Americans.

Mr Biden announced last week that his administration would cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt for Americans with outstanding federal loans and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients. The move was cheered by many in his own party, especially progressives, but was a hard pill to swallow for conservatives who just suffered another recent defeat with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Mr Ryan is a rarity in his own party, particularly among 2020 Senate candidates, in opposition to the plan and released a statement claiming that the move send the “wrong message” to working-class Americans.

On Sunday, he was asked by Ms Bash on CNN whether that stance conflicted with a position he took in 2018, prior to his unsuccessful presidential bid, calling for relief for student borrowers.

“Student debt is out of control. If we can bail out the banks who did everything wrong, we can help out the students who did everything right,” Mr Ryan wrote in a 2018 tweet highlighted on State of the Union.

Mr Ryan responded that he agreed that the cost of higher education was “outrageous”, adding, “but there’s nothing in here to control that cost” in the decision made by the Biden administration this past week.

He went on to say that direct relief for student borrowers could be something he would support as “part of a larger [legislative] package”, while indicating that he did not support it without other reforms to higher education costs.

In reality, his 2022 stance does not conflict with the stance Mr Ryan took previously. Apart from that isolated tweet, which does not directly advocate for loan cancellation, Mr Ryan released a statement on his website a few months later endorsing three bills that would drastically reform higher education while also not providing direct relief for student loans. He did stake out other, more progressive stances on other aspects of higher education in that 2018 press release, including support for making public colleges and universities tuition-free. That bill was funded through a tax on Wall Street speculation.

The legislation he supported at the time would also have directed the federal government to halve interest rates for federal student loans, and allowed existing borrowers to re-finance their loans “at the lowest possible interest rates”.

Mr Ryan is locked in a dead heat with author JD Vance in Ohio’s US Senate race, with most polls showing him leading his GOP opponent by a slim margin. Unlike his fellow US Senate candidates in the Democratic Party, the congressman has vocally distanced himself from Joe Biden in recent months as well as other nationally-recognised figures in the party like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders.

He is also a vocal opponent of the reelection of Nancy Pelosi to the speakership role in the House of Representatives, and challenged her directly for the gavel in 2016.