Liberals push Biden to cancel student debt
Pressley, Warren and Healey team up
Three of the Bay State’s most powerful women have joined forces to push President Biden to wipe out up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower as the White House weighs its options.
“We’re all here to call on President Biden to do right by the movement that elected him,” U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley declared, going on to say canceling student debt is “critical to a just, robust and equitable recovery from this pandemic.”
Pressley, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and state Attorney General Maura Healey have separately called on Biden to sign off on sweeping federal student loan forgiveness. On Thursday, they sought strength in numbers to send their message straight to the top.
“The president has the power to make this change today,” Healey said. “And it is so important because we can’t allow families to be pushed further and further behind in the opportunity to build their future.”
Biden previously rejected calls from progressive Democrats and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to wipe out up to $50,000 per borrower, and has suggested $10,000 instead.
But on Thursday, White House chief of staff Ronald Klain told Politico that Biden “hasn’t made a decision either way” and has asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to compile a memo on the president’s legal authority to forgive student loan debt.
“That’s great,” Pressley said. “Because in all the conversations that I’ve been a part of with impacted people, they see that that $10,000 as not even interest.”
Pressley and her comrades believe Biden has the executive authority to cancel debt under the Higher Education Act — and she said doing so is a “direct mandate” from the “diverse coalition” that sent him to the White House.
“If you’re going to speak to the role that Black women have played on the ballot and at the ballot box, Black women are the most educated and the most burdened by student debt,” Pressley said. “So you can say the words of appreciation. Policy is my love language — cancel student debt.”
There are 855,000 borrowers in Massachusetts who owe a total of $33.3 billion in student loan debt, with an average balance of nearly $39,000, officials said.
One borrower, La’Kayla Carpenter, was on the cusp of buying her first home when she found out she still had $23,000 in debt, and said she was “berated” when she offered up her closing costs to take her loan out of default.
“This would really help people like me,” Carpenter said.
Critics have called mass student debt cancellation unfair to former borrowers who worked hard to pay off their loans.
But Warren dismissed that argument, saying “our economy would do better if all of the people who have student loan debt were able to get out and start their own small businesses, able to buy homes.”