In a letter to his constituents published on his Substack Monday, Democratic Congressman for Maine’s 2nd District Jared Golden called out dark money-funded political networks for criticizing his opposition to President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
On Aug. 18, Rep. Golden issued a statement on X, formerly Twitter, in response to a blog post from the Maine Beacon, a digital news and opinion outlet funded by the left-wing dark money organization Arabella Advisors.
“Sadly, this is what radical leftist elites are learning about ‘democracy’ these days — silence and destroy anyone who disagrees with your views or goals,” Golden said. “I stand by my vote and my opposition to forking out $10,000 to people who freely chose to attend college.”
Following his statement, Golden was attacked relentlessly by Maine’s liberal Twitterati.
“The Twitterati can keep bemoaning their priveledged status and demanding handouts all they want, but as far as I’m concerned if they want free money for college, they can join the Marines and serve the country like I, and so many others, have in the past and many more will in the future,” his statement reads.
In his Monday letter, Golden clarifies that his criticism of Biden’s loan forgiveness scheme was not meant to be directed towards working-class Mainers, but to paid leftist political operatives who occupy an elite and well-educated upper class.
“Because I opposed President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which was struck down by the courts, I was attacked by a political organization funded by difficult-to-trace dark money but with obvious connections to Washington D.C. political networks,” Golden wrote, referring to the Maine Beacon.
“The group came after me not with a strong defense of the policy it supports, but instead a broadside attack against my character and that of my colleague Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Some people have protested the vehemence of my statement in response to that attack, but where I come from, personal attacks of this nature are not taken sitting down,” he added.
Golden explains that to him, “radical leftist elites” have these main characteristics: “a college degree(s), work in politics, and make a salary that is in the top fifth of wage earners; their preferred political tactic for dealing with credible differences of opinion about matters of policy is to lash out with personal attacks questioning someone’s intelligence, motives, or ethics; and their operations are often funded through legal, but corrupt, loopholes that allow millionaires and billionaires to funnel unlimited amounts of money into politics without transparency.”
Golden then moves to a discussion of class and politics, defending himself against a political opinion writer that said he was out of step with the working class due to his present work in politics and past service in the Marine Corps.
“I believe that class is more than just economics and how much money you make or have in the bank or the assets you own,” Golden wrote.
“[Class] includes some mixture of how you make your money, what a good life means to you, where you come from and where you live, the traditions and institutions you hold dear or don’t prescribe to, the values you use to set your compass, your level of educational attainment and how you use it – and this isn’t an exhaustive list,” he wrote.
Golden’s Congressional salary is $174,000, and he claims in his letter to owe money on his house, truck, his wife’s car, and college debt.
While his wife, who went to the University of Maine School of Law, would have qualified for Biden’s student debt relief plan, Golden says that “as a general rule, I don’t support policies that would benefit my household,” because he doesn’t think he and his wife “need the help.”
“A lot of political actors want to talk about class like it’s just straight dollars and cents. It’s more complicated than that. When we reduce class to the possession of wealth and money to spend, and we accept the premise that the objective of life must be to climb up a rung or two of the class ladder, I believe that we sell our society short,” Golden added. “A rich life is not always the result of the accumulation of more and more financial wealth.”
Golden’s criticism of Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is that it is poorly crafted and not well-targeted towards those who need the relief most.
Biden’s plan would have forgiven up to $10,000 in student debt for an individual making $125,000 — while the median income in ME-02 is $56,000.
“In ME-02, only 29 percent of my constituents have a college degree, and only 18 percent would have qualified under the forgiveness plan,” Golden wrote. “Nationally, 17 percent of adults have federal student debt, and nearly half of that debt is held by one-tenth of those individuals.”
Real reform, in Golden’s view, would involve capping the interest rates that banks can levy for education loans, increasing the amount provided by Pell Grants to help lower-income families pay for college, and tie federal money to college performance standards.
In his letter, Golden also emphasizes Maine’s need for skilled tradespeople.
“We need skilled tradespeople who can make things,” he wrote. “We need to ensure that we are independent instead of dependent on the skills of foreign workers and the production power of another country.”
“My final thought is this – reasonable people can debate and disagree about the merits of this idea – but pegging those who oppose it as corrupt, racist, or out-of-touch only serves to further undermine, what was from my perspective, an already weak policy proposal,” Golden concluded his letter.
2 Comments
Excellent article. It’s not the traditional Democrats but the hard-Left anti-American Marxists who have taken over the Party that are out of touch and are trying to destroy the country. Good for Golden for speaking out.
Hats off for Golden’s stand on the unconstitutional study loan forgiveness. That’s trivial stuff when compared to his consistently supporting the policies of the Biden regime that’s killing our country.