MACON, Ga. — Wayne Johnson didn't even wait for the sun to rise when he submitted his resignation from the Trump administration. He had been overseer of the country's $1.6 trillion in student loan debt held by 44 million borrowers. After mulling the decision and finally deciding to stay home in Georgia, he tossed and turned most of Wednesday night of last week and handed in his resignation at 5:01 a.m. the next morning to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Around an hour later, Johnson made a different announcement that hurled him into headlines: Most of the student debt he'd managed should be canceled. "By 7 a.m., requests started pouring in from around the country for interviews," the 67-year-old Johnson said during an interview with CNBC on Sunday night at a gated retirement community he owns in Macon. Even though the interview was on a Sunday night, he wore a black suit and tomato-red tie.

Wayne Johnson at the Gables of Wolf Creek, the retirement community he owns in Macon, Georgia Annie Nova | CNBC

US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images

When Johnson heard those comments, he winced. "I was fully expecting that somebody was going to say, 'This is what she said. This is what he said.'" Still, Johnson insists his vision for higher education is shaped by Republican values and is a far cry from the progressive Democrats' plans to make public colleges tuition- and debt-free. He called those ideas, "basically socialism." "What I bring to it is more of a sound, conservative, Georgian business-mind approach," Johnson said. Before DeVos hired Johnson in 2017, he had worked for decades in the consumer financial services industry, including stints as an executive at Visa and CEO of a student loan refinancing company. In his 60s, he received his Ph.D. at Mercer University, where he wrote his dissertation on private student debt. The student loan crisis, in Johnson's view, is evidence that the Education Department has failed as a lender. "We made the mess, we need to fix it," he said, explaining his call for the debt cancellation. Outstanding education debt has outpaced credit card and auto debt. The average college graduate leaves school $30,000 in the red today, up from $10,000 in the 1990s. Every day, 3,000 borrowers go into default. Johnson calls the current system, "absolutely unsustainable." "If you're in an insane situation, it's only going to become more insane," he said. Johnson proposes to forgive $50,000 in student debt for all borrowers. The plan would be paid for with a 1% tax on revenue generated from corporations and nonprofit organizations, Johnson said. Johnson also hopes to widen the appeal of his proposal by offering a $50,000 tax credit to any college graduate who didn't borrow or had already paid off their debt. It's Johnson's vision for what will happen after the debt forgiveness where he most aligns with his party. He wants to do away with federal loans altogether. "That's where the Republican in me comes to light," Johnson said. In a 2016 report outlining the Republican agenda, it reads: "The federal government should not be in the business of originating student loans." It also says the "private sector participation in student financing should be restored."