A student loan official within the Department of Education plans to resign from his post, and advocate for the forgiveness of millions of student loan debtors while doing so.
A. Wayne Johnson, who has worked in the Office of Federal Student Aid since 2017 (most recently as chief strategy and transportation officer), recently stated that he believes the student loan program is “fundamentally broken, The Daily Beast reported.
“We run through the process of putting this debt burden on somebody…but it rides on their credit files — it rides on their back — for decades,” Johnson said.
Johnson believes that student debt for individuals who have up to $50,000 in outstanding loans should be forgiven. That would effectively wipe out the debts for about 37 million individuals.
“The time has come for us to end and stop the insanity,” he added.
He once oversaw the country’s student-loan portfolio. Now A. Wayne Johnson is quitting the Trump administration and calling for student debt to be canceled https://t.co/qSIeX1ObtM via @WSJ
— Josh Mitchell (@JMitchellWSJ) October 24, 2019
Johnson’s resignation from the office does not come out of conviction for his beliefs on student loans, however. Rather, Johnson is applying to the Georgia governor’s office in hopes of being appointed to a U.S. Senate position that was vacated by Sen. Johnny Isakson, who is retiring this year due to health reasons.
Johnson has previously said he would be a conservative voice in the Senate that would try to work in a bipartisan manner, if appointed. “I intend to follow Senator Isakson’s example as a conservative Republican who is able to work across the aisle in Congress,” Johnson said, per reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
If appointed to the position, Johnson would have to run for election in November of 2020 to retain the seat. He’d then have to run for re-election at the expiration of the term in 2022, if he decided to run for the position again.