STFU Michele Bachmann

Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann criticized a directive by President Barack Obama to ease student loan debt as an “abuse of power” that will give people incentive to dodge debt.

The candidates reacted Thursday to a decision Obama announced a day earlier to cap required payments for some college loan borrowers at a lower percentage of their income and forgive payments for others after 20 years. He used executive authority to accelerate a law that wasn’t supposed to go into effect until 2014.

“I believe it is abuse of power from the executive to impose via an executive order a wholesale change in the student loan,” Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman, said during an education forum in New York put on by The College Board and News Corp.

“There is a morality in keeping our financial promises, and I don’t think we should push that off onto the taxpayer,” she said. “The individual needs to repay and be responsible for repaying their student loan debt.”

There’s also a “morality” in making education affordable to everyone, but that’s something that is probably WAY over your head.