Canceling $50,000 in student debt would help Americans whose “only sin was being born into a family that couldn’t write a check for them to go to school,” says Elizabeth Warren
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Senator Warren told MSNBC that Biden should cancel student debt to help millions of Americans.
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Calls like Warren’s have spiked in recent months, with payments set to resume on May 1.
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White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and the Department of Education have hinted that more relief could come by May.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said it once, and she will say it again: President Joe Biden can and must cancel student debt.
“Cancelling $50,000 in student loan debt would help tens of millions of Americans,” Warren told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Sunday. “People whose only sin was being born into a family that couldn’t write a check for them to go to school, and yet went out and tried to get an education.”
Calls like Warren’s have only gotten louder in recent months. Student loan payments have been suspended for two years and interest waived, as part of pandemic relief. Biden widened this break for the third time until May 1. That date is fast approaching, and some legislators and defenders say that if Biden does not extend a fourth time, he should largely cancel student debt before 43 million federal borrowers are sent back into repayment.
There are signs that more relief could be coming. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain suggested at Pod Save America two weeks ago that borrowers can expect some sort of student debt relief ahead of the scheduled date to resume payments.
“The president is going to look at what we should do on student debt before the pause expires, or he will extend the pause,” Klain said, adding that “the question of whether or not there is a the executive on canceling student debt when payments resume is a decision we will make before payments resume.”
More recently, the Ministry of Education reportedly ordered student loan companies to stop sending reviews to borrowers regarding when payments will resume, suggesting that the department is preparing for a different, and likely later, date to resume student debt collection.
Yet Biden promised during his campaign to endorse the cancellation of $10,000 student debt for each borrower, and his silence on the issue frustrated some voters. A student borrower before Recount Insider that it’s “shattering” Biden has yet to deliver on his promise.
“I would be shocked, and I would love to go to the voting booth if they did,” he said, referring to student loan relief. “But right now they have to win my vote, and right now they’re not.”
Some Republican lawmakers have critical the idea of more student loan relief. A group of House Republicans recently called the student loan forgiveness “reckless” and “short-sighted,” citing the cost the relief would have on taxpayers and the economy.
Warren has already sounded the alarm on the impact that failure to cancel student debt would have on the election, and she is not the only Democrat to do so. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted in December, it would be “truly delusional” to think that Democrats could win an election without respecting progressive priorities, and Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley told Insider that “the ultimate persuasion is impact, and Democrats win when we deliver bold, impactful policies that improve the lives of our fellow citizens.”
Read the original article at Business Intern