Elizabeth Warren slams McConnell over cost of college tuition, but quickly trips over her past job

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tried to slam Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for opposing President Joe Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan.

But she quickly tripped over her own contributions to the student loan debt crisis.

What did McConnell say?

On Wednesday, McConnell released a terse statement condemning Biden's plan.

The statement said, in part:

Washington Democrats have found yet another way to make inflation even worse, reward far-left activists, and achieve nothing for millions of working American families who can barely tread water. President Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt. This policy is astonishingly unfair.

How did Warren respond?

Warren deployed her trite narrative about the exploding cost of college.

"Senator McConnell graduated from a school that cost $330 a year. Today it costs over $12,000," Warren responded, referring to the University of Kentucky.

"McConnell has done nothing to fix it — and is irate that the President is stepping up to help millions of working Americans drowning in debt. He can spare us the lectures on fairness," she added.

Warren loves to talk about the skyrocketing cost of college tuition to argue for student loan debt forgiveness.

Rarely, however, does Warren address why college tuition has skyrocketed and how the federal student loan system incentivizes college administrators to increase tuition prices.

Thus, in response to Warren's attack, it was widely noted that Warren has negatively contributed to the crisis.

As PolitiFact explained, Warren was paid more than $400,000 for teaching two classes at Harvard Law School in 2010 and 2011. One wonders why Warren accepted such a large salary to teach students who most likely received student loans to attend her class if she believes there is something deeply amiss with the system.

Anything else?

Americans hold $1.6 trillion in outstanding student loan debt. That is a problem worth addressing, but simply forgiving debt without fixing the underlying problems will erase any progress Biden's plan will make toward reducing student loan debt.

As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found in 2017 study, "The average tuition increase associated with expansion of student loans is as much as 60 cents per dollar. That is, more federal aid to students enables colleges to raise tuition more," the Cato Institute explained.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in fact, estimates it will take just five years for outstanding student loan debt to return to its current level if Biden's plan is fully implemented.