President Biden
Joe Biden: Biden responds to student loan forgiveness plan K, Biden offers to help the woman get the vaccine for a child with a pre-existing condition. faces an intense backlash from progressive lawmakers after saying Tuesday it would not sign any measures to forgive up to $ 50,000 in student debt in federal possession by borrower through executive action.
During a CNN town hall, Biden overturned the debt forgiveness plan pushed by top Democratic lawmakers and prominent progressives, including the Senate majority leader Charles Schumer
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“I won’t get this to happen,” Biden said when asked if he would support $ 50,000 in student loan forgiveness.
He reiterated his previous support for up to $ 10,000 in debt relief per borrower, but expressed concern that a higher total forgiven through executive actions would disproportionately help the wealthy and could violate the law.
“I think at this time of economic pain and tension we should eliminate the interest on the debts that accumulate, number 1. And number 2, I am willing to repay the debt of $ 10,000, but not [$50,000]”.
Biden had already expressed opposition to a $ 50,000 pardon plan and the White House has repeatedly said the president would prefer to alleviate student debt through an act of Congress. But Biden’s unequivocal and public refusal to go as far as the progressives want provoked the president’s first major struggle with the left since he took office.
“An ocean of student loan debt is holding back 43 million borrowers and disproportionately weighing black and brown Americans,” Schumer and Warren said in a joint statement Wednesday. The two reintroduced a resolution earlier this month asking Biden to cancel up to $ 50,000 per borrower, a bill they first introduced in September.
“It simply came to our notice then. We will keep fighting, ”they said.
There are about 43 million Americans who owe a total of $ 1.6 trillion in student loans to the federal government. While progressives have argued for years that student debt forgiveness is essential to reducing inequality and bridging the racial wealth gap, moderates like Biden have approached it as a way to curb the damage of the coronavirus recession. .
The battle to reach the student debt forgiveness limit has been on slow fire since the Biden election in November and intensified when Democrats took control of the Senate in January.
The meager democratic majority has given Biden a way to move forward with his preferred plan (a bill, not an executive order, to forgive up to $ 10,000 per borrower) through Congress.
But progressives had been pushing Biden to rise higher and use executive action long before the Senate took over the Democrats.
Schumer, who is expected to face a major challenge from the left in 2022, said in November that the incoming president had the power to unilaterally eliminate the $ 50,000-per-borrower debts. Warren in December went even further, insisting that Biden had a “moral obligation” to follow the plan he proposed with Schumer.
Biden is open to an executive order for debt relief, but suggested on Tuesday that there may be legal limits on how much he could forgive. The president also said he was not comfortable with eliminating the debts of graduates from prestigious universities and preferred to renew pre-existing forgiveness programs based on public service.
“The idea that I’m telling a community that I’m going to forgive billions of dollars is dead to people who have gone to Harvard, Yale and Penn … is that they will be forgiven instead of using that money to provide early education for young children who come from disadvantaged circumstances? “Biden said.
While Biden’s refusal to aim more at debt relief disappointed progressives, his justification infuriated them.
“Who cares what school someone went to? Whole generations of working class children were encouraged to collect more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong “, he tweeted on Ocasio-Cortez on Wednesday. “Nowhere does he say we need to change early childhood education to forgive student loans. We can have both. “
Despite growing pressure from progressives, it could be months before Biden makes his decision on student loan forgiveness.
Biden has extended the pause in federal student loan payments and accrued interest until September, easing the urgency of tackling debt.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
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“What the president has told Sens. Schumer and Warren is that once their team is in place in the Department of Justice … they will be asked to do a legal review of their authority to act through executive actions,” he said. said Psaki.
“There is a legal consideration there, as I think everyone agrees, and there is a policy consideration, and once it is concluded, it will decide a path to follow,” he added.
Biden’s legal authority to alleviate student debt is not an established law. While progressive legal analysts say the Higher Education Act gives Biden the option of instructing the Secretary of Education to reduce student loan balances, conservative layers say debt forgiveness is beyond limits of the law.
Former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos
Betsy DeVos When Randi Weingarten echoes Betsy Devos Schumer, Warren introduces a bill asking Biden to pay off student loan debt Former Trump officials find a difficult job market MORE debated whether he had the authority to forgive student loan debt amid the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, but lawyers for the Trump administration determined it would be illegal. However, his analysis is not binding and lawyers for the Biden administration could come to a different conclusion.
Psaki also suggested on Wednesday that Biden would limit debt relief based on the borrower’s income and educational level, far from the biggest, one-sided elimination with the support of progressives.
He previously said that relief in excess of $ 10,000 should be directed at the borrower’s income, depending on the type of debt in question (public schools versus private schools, graduate schools versus undergraduate students), obviously , there are many considerations at stake, “he said.
Even if Biden determines that he has the power to forgive student debt through an executive order, he is likely to face the bounce of progressives depending on the scope of his forgiveness plan.
“We have the * leader of the majority of the Senate * on board to forgive $ 50,000. Biden stops, but many of the arguments against it do not contain water when inspected closely,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez.
“We can and must do it. Keep pushing! “