20 November 2020 - President-elect Joe Biden is being urged to cancel student debt
Push for Biden to cancel student debt using executive order grows
Megan Henney (Fox News, 19/11/2020)
Calls are mounting for President-elect Joe Biden to erase student loan debt on his first day in the White House.
On Wednesday, 239 nonprofit and community organizations, including the NAACP and the American Federation for Teachers, urged the incoming president to act unilaterally and cancel nearly $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, arguing it could stimulate the pandemic-stricken economy and reduce the racial wealth gap.
"Before the COVID-19 public health crisis began, student debt was already a drag on the national economy, weighing heaviest on Black and Latinx communities, as well as women," the groups wrote in an open letter to Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “That weight is likely to be exponentially magnified given the disproportionate toll that COVID-19 is taking on both the health and economic security of people of color and women."
How canceling student debt became the first political minefield of the Joe Biden era
Will Bunch (The Philadelphia Inquirer, 19/11/2020)
While President Trump still dominates your TV screen by refusing to surrender the last war, in a dead-ender “last throes” jihad of embarrassing courtroom losses, the savvier political and ideological players of the bitterly divided left and right in America are already mapping strategy out for the first great battle under the 46th president, Joe Biden.
College.
To be a little more specific, America’s staggering $1.7 trillion student debt, which is increasingly seen as a millstone around the necks of millions of mostly Millennials and Gen Z-ers who felt compelled in today’s job market to wager thousands of dollars in loans for the credential of a university diploma, with mixed results.
What Biden Should Do About Student Debt
Jordan Weissmann (Slate, 19/11/2020)
Canceling student debt wasn’t really at the top of Joe Biden’s to-do list when he ran for the White House. But now that he’s president-elect, everyone in Washington seems to be talking about the idea, from gung-ho progressives to skeptical wonks to scornful conservatives.
Why the sudden surge of interest? In part, it’s because mass forgiveness might be one of the few big, bold, constituency-pleasing and legacy-making moves Biden could realistically make without the help of Congress. Unless Democrats win both of January’s runoff elections in Georgia, Republicans will keep control of the Senate and be able to block most of the incoming president’s legislative agenda. But a handful of legal experts have argued that Biden could cancel all outstanding federal student loans using nothing but his executive authority. This view has been embraced by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who’ve urged Biden to write off up to $50,000 for each borrower.
Push for student loan forgiveness puts Biden in tight spot
Niv Elis, Sylvan Lane (The Hill, 19/11/2020)
Democratic leaders in Congress are pushing President-elect Joe Biden to take quick action on canceling student loan debt with an executive order to stimulate the economy and provide relief to struggling borrowers.
Biden has expressed interest in forgiving some amount of education debt, a move that would undoubtedly trigger political backlash, perhaps on both sides of the aisle.
There are also questions among economists about how much of a boost to consumer spending would result from swift action during a downturn.