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President Joe Biden‘s plan to forgive at least $10,000 in student loans has divided Americans, many of whom worked hard to repay their debts and are angry that others get a free ride on the taxpayers’ dime.

DailyMail.com spoke with former students across the U.S. about the Democratic president’s plan to forgive loans for millions of debt-saddled former college students, which could add up to as much as $600 billion.

Some said they saved up to pay for college and were furious that their responsible financial planning would leave them not benefiting one cent from the relief plan and potentially paying roughly $2,000 in taxes to help pay for it.

They include a 37-year-old Californian who labored at a car rental outlet while his college classmates partied, and a New York mom-of-three who cleaned rooms to feed her kids through her degree and spent 12 years repaying an $80,000 loan.

A mom-of-two from Georgia, meanwhile, served in the U.S. military to earn a government-funded education. She called the write-off a betrayal of American values and akin to the Soviet-style welfare her immigrant parents fled in the 1990s.

Still, others backed the debt forgiveness. A self-made technology entrepreneur from rural Oregon said freeing hard-up graduates from ‘crippling debt’ would help them take risks and give back to the economy overall.

They were responding to Biden’s announcement this week that his administration was forgiving $10,000 in student loans for those making less than $125,000 and joint filers making $250,000 combined. 

Recipients of Pell Grants, aimed at the poorest students, would receive $20,000.

Taxpayers who didn’t take out loans or have already paid them off will not benefit from the scheme, but will still help pay for the relief. Republican politicians have heckled the move as unfair to working families.

In forgiving debt, Biden was coming good on a campaign promise, which may help Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. 

A recent poll by progressive think tank Data for Progress found that 60 percent of 1,425 respondents agreed the federal government should eliminate all or some student loan. 

Still, many worry it will fuel inflation, as do some economists.

U.S. university tuition fees are among the world’s most expensive. Consumers carry $1.75 trillion in student loan debt, most of it held by the federal government. 

DailyMail.com spoke with former students living in California, Georgia, New Jersey and elsewhere who had all paid off their students debts to find out whether they loved or hated footing the college costs of others.

Davidson Scott Dorgan, 37, a business economics graduate, borrowed $5,000 to study business at University of California, Santa Barbara, aided by a Pell Grant. While his classmates partied all night, Dorgan worked late shifts at a car rental outlet, so he wouldn’t be saddled with debt upon graduation. He got a job and repaid those loans quickly, working his way up at an air logistics firm in Monrovia, California, and is now a married dad-of-two homeowner.

I was dead tired. I worked the late shift till 10 or 11 o’clock at night you, closing the rental counter at Santa Barbara airport. Working through school and summer for two years, missing out on a lot of fun, love and partying. I was just trying to do the responsible thing and get my career going.

Apparently, I should have just taken another $20,000 in loans, not worked, partied, and had fun.

Over the years, I’ve even advised people to repay their student loans, saying the government would never step in to cover them. I was wrong about that. That’s the problem with Biden’s decision. It’s not just that it rewards irresponsible behavior and people who don’t pay their debts. It’s that it changes the whole calculus. Should we save money to send our kids to college? What advice do I give them about paying off student loans they take out?

Marianna Davidovich, 48, from an entrepreneurial Ukrainian immigrant family, finished high school in Florida and served in the U.S. military’s language program for six years. The government financed her online degree, an MBA from Colorado’s Aspen University. Still, college was a struggle for a single mom-of-two, but it paid off, and she’s now a high-powered communications officer at the Foundation for Economic Education, a think tank, living in Atlanta, Georgia.

We have a very strict motto in my family. We do not owe people anything. We don’t take out loans, and we live well below our means. This student debt forgiveness situation is completely backwards. This is not what this country was built upon, not these principles. 

The message it’s sending to young people is ‘Don’t worry about it, take out all the loans you want, you’ll be forgiven. Biden will take care of you’. I’m trying to teach my own children and other people’s children what it means to work hard and reap the benefits. 

This country is turning into what we ran away from in the former Soviet Union, a welfare state with long lines of people waiting for handouts and stamps.

Matt Wallaert, 40, from a working class rural Oregon family borrowed $30,000 to study social psychology at Swarthmore College, a private liberal arts institute in Pennsylvania. Upon graduating in 2004, he repaid that debt within 18 months by working 80-hour weeks in two jobs, one on the college IT helpdesk. He got into technology startups, behavioral science consultancy BeSci.io and is now a millionaire entrepreneur, author and public speaker in San Diego, California, co-parenting his seven-year-old son.

I graduated in just three years, taking classes over the summer, because it was expensive and I was worried about the debt. I worked my ass off to pay it back, took every job I could, spending as little as possible. All my money went to debt. It was not a fun year. You might think I’m the prototypical person who feels: ‘I did it, someone else can do it’. But that’s to misunderstand the crippling emotional burden of debt. 

I think the debt relief is an excellent use of government funds. It will help people free themselves from a burden that preoccupies them all day, every day, for 30 to 40 years of their lives. I love that it’s going to have a disproportionate effect on black Americans and others. We need people to be able to take risks in order to grow the economic potential of this country, and they can’t do that if they have a giant debt burden.

Lissa Pettenati, 64, a mom-of-three and science teacher from upstate New York, borrowed $80,000 to get the Masters she needed to teach in the state from St. Bonaventure University in the mid-1990s. During the two-year course, she cleaned the dormitories of other students to pay rent and feed her three young children. Sen went back to teaching upon graduation, repaying her debt within 12 years despite only a basic science teachers’ salary of about $40,000 per year. Her kids are now in their thirties, and she teaches in New Jersey.

I am livid about it. I had to pay it, and I paid it back. Now I’m a senior, and I’m going to have to pay for somebody else’s degrees when they have probably gone to private schools. This just makes me sick

Instead of making those debt repayments for all those years, I could have been saving that money up for my own kids to go to college.

Biden is giving away money. Where are these this millions and trillions of dollars coming from, and who’s going to pay for it in the end? This kind of debt is going to affect my grandchildren, all this money that’s being given away. I live on a farm in New Jersey now and I’m ready for when the depression hits.