White House Started a Discussion About Canceling Some Student Debt
Amina Tokakova
Trending Editor
Following quite a while of insistence from President Joe Biden that he won’t seek after the wide-scale cancelation of the student loans, the White House authorities are presently considering ways the president could utilize his power as president to cancel some of the student debt. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Thursday that he met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, “to find a path forward” on the issue of the student loans. “As a first-generation college student, I understand the importance of a plan focused on addressing student loan debt,” Cardona said via web-based media after the gathering. “I’m excited to get to work supporting our students’ futures.”
The gathering comes as some progressive Democrats are seething that Biden’s more than $2 trillion foundation plan doesn’t go far enough and leaves large numbers of their needs. Recently, soon after Biden was sworn into office, Schumer, Warren, and compelling individuals from the House progressive caucus, including Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, approached Biden to cancel student loan debt, outlining it as a duty to the underprivileged students who made up the majority of his supporters during the election.
“We are here to demand responsive legislation to the needs of the movement who delivered this victory, to finally center our most vulnerable and marginalized communities to demand a recovery that finally invests in people,” Pressley said, outlining the crossing out of educational loan debt as a racial and financial equity issue and arguing that Biden “be bold and responsive to the movement that elected him.” “I will not make that happen,” he said, referring to worries about dropping student debt for borrowers who moved on from tip-top schools like Harvard University – basically holding fast to the possibility that wide-scale student loan cancelation will be benefitting richer borrowers and will hurt less privileged students. “I understand the impact of the debt and how it can be debilitating,” he said. “I do think in this moment of economic pain and strain that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulating. I’m prepared to write off $10,000 but not $50,000.”
Congressional Democrats have since quite a while ago demanded that Biden could utilize his leader position to cancel all student loans across the nation, yet Biden has openly ignored that demand. Presently, it appears to be that the White House is, truth be told, considering ways the president could utilize his presidential power to cancel some of the student debt.
White House chief of staff Ron Klain told Politico on Thursday that Biden requested that Cardona set up an update about his legal authority to cancel a portion of the student debt in the country and that, based on that update, Biden will conclude how to continue and approach the issue efficiently. Meanwhile, Biden’s higher education team has been centered around canceling student loans for borrowers who were scammed by private schools and providing other financial relief to permanently disabled borrowers and the individuals who have defaulted on their loans since the beginning of the pandemic last March.
Contact Amina at aminat.tokakova@student.shu.edu