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Biden: Georgia needs to ‘smarten up’ to avoid losing business

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Joe Biden

President Joe Biden praised businesses for opposing new voting laws while telling Georgia and other states to “smarten up.”

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Biden said “it’s reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws that are just antithetical to who we are.”

“There’s another side to it too. When they in fact move out of Georgia, people who need help most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt the most,” he continued.

Biden then went on to say that he supports and respects businesses’ decisions to protest the new voting legislation.

“I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make or group to make, I respect them when they make that judgment, I support whatever judgment they make. The best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up. Stop it, stop it,” he said.

Biden said last week that he would “strongly support” moving the MLB All-Star Game out of Georgia to protest the new voting laws, joining other corporations condemning the new laws such as Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola.

Less than two days later, the MLB announced it would relocate the game, citing Georgia’s “restrictions to the ballot box.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) told reporters Tuesday that he does not support corporations taking sides on “incendiary issues” such as the new Georgia legislation.

“I’m not talking about political contributions,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky. “Most of them contribute to both sides. They have political action committees. That’s fine. It’s legal. It’s appropriate. I support that. I’m talking about taking a position on a highly incendiary issue like this and punishing a community or state because you don’t like a particular law they passed. I just think it’s stupid. … What I’m saying here is I think this is quite stupid.”

McConnell continued, arguing that companies will lose business by choosing sides.

“Republicans drink Coca-Cola, too, and we fly, and we like baseball,” he said. “It’s irritating one hell of a lot of Republican fans.”

Follow Annaliese Levy on Twitter @AnnalieseLevy

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Economy

White House announced $6 billion student loan forgiveness for 78,000 public service workers

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United States Congress

The White House recently announced a $6 billion loan forgiveness program. Nurses, teachers and firefighters are among the 78,000 public service workers who will qualify. Fox Business reports:

Due to fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, workers that never received forgiveness are now having their debts partially forgiven or canceled. Only about 7,000 public service borrowers received forgiveness prior to the Biden Administration, now that total hovers closer to 870,000, the announcement said.

“Today’s announcement comes on top of the significant progress we’ve achieved for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years,” the announcement stated. “This includes: providing the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing Income-Driven Repayment plans so borrowers in repayment for years get the relief they earned; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the SAVE plan.”

However, there is concern over fairness that older generations are still paying off student loans and could risk losing Social Security. A group of representatives wrote a letter to Congress, hoping to address the issue of seniors still paying down student loans. Currently, under the Treasury Offset Program (TOP), the government can collect funds, such as tax refunds and Social Security, to pay outstanding student loan balances, reports Fox Business.

“Under the TOP, the federal government can withhold up to 15 percent of monthly Social Security or disability benefits for defaulted student loans,” the lawmakers explained in their letter.

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