Betting markets show Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the frontrunner to snag the Democrats’ 2028 presidential nomination.

But despite earning $173,000 a year as a member of Congress, AOC refuses to pay back her student loans — a red flag that she has no respect for taxpayers.

Her supporters claim her college loans make her relatable.

“This is what happens when we elect normal people to Congress,” leftist activist David Hogg posted approvingly.

“I need a president that’s still drowning in student loan debt with me,” another fan wrote.  

Relatable to the elite, maybe, but not to everybody. 

Households in the top fifth for earnings are three times more likely to have college debt than households in the bottom fifth of the economy. 

That means when doctors, lawyers and members of Congress don’t pay their college loans, working stiffs who never got to go to college — bus drivers, waiters and sanitation workers — end up on the hook. Totally unfair.

If we elect a student-loan deadbeat to our nation’s highest office — the nation’s first freeloader-in-chief — hold onto your wallet, and prepare for financial calamity.

Political analyst Doug Schoen last week warned that AOC “carries massive ideological baggage,” but in truth she’s hardly a Marxist scholar.

She’s a poster child for the economic illiteracy of Gen Z and Millennial Democratic Socialists.

The congresswoman, who graduated in 2011, currently owes between $15,000 and $19,000 in student loans — after owing $19,000 in 2019.

Seven years and she’s barely made a dent in her obligation.

She’s single, with no dependents.  

But she’s announced with great fanfare that she’s planning to freeze her eggs — an expensive proposition.  

And she spends plenty on her personal presentation — paying $25 a pop for her signature Stila bright-red lipstick, about twice the cost of a drugstore brand, and winning praise for her cutting-edge fashion and “power tailoring.”

Yet she can’t manage her personal finances well enough to pay back her student loans?

It’s crazy to trust her with the nation’s finances.

“It was literally easier for me to become the youngest woman in American history elected to Congress than it is for me to pay off my student loan debt,” she said during her first year in the House.  

That was plausible when she was a bartender. Not anymore.

Now, her ongoing indebtedness is disqualifying.

Millions of Americans have delayed marriage, childbearing and homeownership because of student loan debt.

It’s a serious problem — but that doesn’t mean the debts should simply be erased. 

In 2020 AOC, along with Sens. Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, pressed President Joe Biden to offer $50,000 loan “forgiveness” to every debt holder.

They blasted him for not getting it done by executive order. But the word “forgiveness” is a hoax.

You may ask the Almighty for “forgiveness” in prayer; you may ask it of a friend you’ve offended.

But when a student loan borrower doesn’t pay, the debt isn’t forgiven — it’s transferred.

And the rest of us get gouged. 

That’s what Education Secretary Linda McMahon told 9 million Americans with delinquent student loans last March, reminding them that taxpayers are on the hook for the $425 billion they owe.

AOC’s foot-dragging on her student loan reveals a stunning lack of respect for taxpayers.

That same disrespect is why she’s an outspoken opponent of work requirements for able-bodied people on Medicaid — that is, for couch potatoes who are capable of working but refuse. 

Back in 2010, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi championed expanding Medicaid to able-bodied adults, arguing that it would free Americans from the burden of staying in a job for the health insurance. 

Aspiring poets or artists could quit the drudgery of work and find themselves — on your dime.

So the poets and couch potatoes are in their heyday, with the latest data showing that almost six out of every 10 non-disabled adults on Medicaid don’t work at all.

That’s why the Republican Congress enacted reforms last year requiring healthy adults without dependents to work, volunteer, or attend 20 weekly hours of addiction treatment or job counseling to qualify for Medicaid.

But AOC vehemently opposes this reform. 

“Everyone should have health care in America, regardless of who you are and what you’re doing,” she’s  said — oblivious that work is essential to people’s well-being, and the nation’s, too. 

Our shrinking workforce participation puts the United States on a course of long-term financial failure, sapping our productivity and imperiling Social Security and Medicare.

But AOC couldn’t care less.

AOC’s a moocher, and she sides with the moochers.

If you want to keep what you earn and keep this nation economically viable, elect a president who will be a responsible steward of taxpayers’ money.

Don’t send an economically illiterate freeloader to the White House. 

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.