Republicans have accused Biden and Democrats of flooding the economy with money from their $1.9 trillion pandemic relief measure, fueling inflation. White House aides have worried that forgiving student debt could hurt the administration politically. He’s also an ally of Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is among the progressive lawmakers pushing Biden to forgive a larger amount of debt.
The top official at the Department of Education overseeing federal student aid is Richard Cordray, a former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former attorney general of Ohio.
Biden has expressed reservations about forgiving debt for high-income earners like doctors and lawyers. One person familiar with the Education Department’s work said the agency’s research is meant to win over an audience of one: the president.
“It could undo the mountains of debt that families have accumulated over generations in an attempt to achieve the American Dream - a dream that we all know wasn’t designed to be accessible to them in the first place,” Johnson said. “At worst, the political appointees there simply don’t care and are unwilling to disclose the true costs to the American public.”īut NAACP President Derrick Johnson sent a letter to Biden Thursday evening urging him to cancel a minimum of $50,000 per borrower, a level that he said “could open doors to homeownership and wealth-creation for those whose families have faced economic oppression over centuries.” “The GAO report is only the latest evidence that, at best, Biden’s Department of Education doesn’t have a clue about the real harm of its policies,” they added. “President Biden is on track to make the most radical changes to postsecondary education at the expense of all taxpayers,” the Republicans - Representatives Virginia Foxx and Greg Murphy and Senators Richard Burr and Mike Braun - said in a statement. On Friday, they pointed to a report by the Government Accountability Office that found the last 25 years’ worth of federal student loans will already cost taxpayers about $197 billion, rather than generating $114 billion in revenue as the Education Department previously estimated. That would fulfill one of the progressive movement’s top goals: wiping out large amounts of debt for millions of Americans, especially Black borrowers who carry disproportionately larger balances than White borrowers, as well as people who never earned a degree from their schooling.īut Republicans are poised to tar any relief as both fueling inflation and wasting taxpayers’ money. A White House spokesperson said the administration is still assessing its options and that no decision had been made.Īdvocates for deeper cuts to loan balances are seeking to persuade Biden to forgive a more meaningful level of debt - $50,000 or more per low-income borrower. The Education Department said its review of broad-based debt cancellation was continuing, and no decisions have been made.
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The department is considering how to identify low-income borrowers, including former recipients of Pell grants, people receiving Social Security payments, and those who have had their wages garnished by the federal government for failure to repay student loans.
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