Here's how much Pete Buttigieg, husband have in student loan debt
Former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen on Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg's calls for tax hikes and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris' equal pay plan.
Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten Glezman, together have a six-figure student loan debt, a point he touched on in Thursday's Democratic primary debate.
In his financial disclosure filed with the Office of Government Ethics in mid-May, Buttigieg reported that he and his husband have between $110,000 and $265,000 in student loan debt, The Associated Press reported. The report requires a range. Chris Meagher, a campaign spokesman, confirmed to FOX Business that the exact amount is $131,296.
During night two of the first Democratic debates, Buttigieg said "college affordability is personal" to him and his husband.
"It's logical to me that if you can refinance your house, you ought to be able to refinance your student debt," he said, adding that he believes in free college specifically for low- and middle-income students.
If elected, Buttigieg, 37, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., would likely be the first president with student loan debt.
Buttigieg has been open on the campaign trail about his and his husband’s student loan debt. The mayor graduated from Harvard University in 2004, then won a Rhodes scholarship and graduated from Oxford in 2007. The presidential hopeful told Vice he was able to get through school without much debt but his husband racked up student loans while getting his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Buttigieg and Glezman were far from alone with the burden of student loan debt. The two are among 43 million people in the U.S. who owe federal student loans.
Outstanding student loan debt is around $1.5 trillion, as of 2018 according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, second only to mortgage debt as a share of Americans’ total debt burdens. Data from Deutsche Bank Research found most people have student debt balances between $10,000 and $25,000. However, in some areas of the country, the amounts are higher, including in the states of New Hampshire, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
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Statistics show 7.8 million people age 50 and older owe a combined $291.9 billion in student loans. Meanwhile, people age 35 to 49, closer to Buttigieg’s age, owe $548.4 billion. That group includes more than 14 million people.
Fox Business’ Brittany De Lea and The Associated Press contributed to this report.