No, Biden can’t cancel student loan debt

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is throwing cold water on the idea that the president can cancel student debt, but her reasoning may be more political than constitutional.

“People think that the president of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not,” Pelosi told reporters on Wednesday, “That has to be an act of Congress.”

As it happens, that’s the same conclusion a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court reached recently when it considered the authorization for an eviction moratorium, leaving it in place only because it was expiring on July 31. However, when President Biden prevailed on the Centers for Disease Control to extend the moratorium until Oct. 3, Pelosi was full of praise for the overreach.

“Thanks to the leadership of President Biden, the imminent fear of eviction and being put out on the street has been lifted for countless families across America. Help is here!” she said.

She was much less interested in overreaching to help the estimated 44.7 million Americans who owe a total of about $1.7 trillion in federal and/or private student loan debt. Faced with the possibility of losing the Democratic majority in the House in next year’s elections, the Speaker had the sound of a politician who has just reviewed fresh poll numbers.

“Suppose your child at this time does not want to go to college, but you’re paying taxes to forgive someone else’s obligation. You may not be happy about that,” she said at her weekly news conference last week.

A moratorium on federal student loan debt collections is currently in place, but it expires on Sept. 30. After that date, borrowers will again be required to make loan payments. Some Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to extend the moratorium through March 2022.

But for other Democrats, that’s not enough. Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts said the president should be “using his executive authority to cancel $50,000 in federal student loan debt.” Senator Elizabeth Warren, also from Massachusetts, warned that many borrowers face student loan payments that are “the size of their rent or car payment,” and ending the moratorium will force them to make “hard choices.”

Not every state is Massachusetts. Pelosi appears concerned about the risk of voter anger if the federal government bails out student borrowers by canceling unpaid debt, while doing nothing for people who worked hard to pay off their own loans or who made a tough decision not to take on the debt in the first place.

The federal government has some debt forgiveness programs in place already, but these are targeted more narrowly. One program provides debt relief to disabled individuals. Another cancels the debt of students who attended particular institutions that misrepresented the value of their degrees or the earning potential that could be expected post-graduation. About 92,000 borrowers have qualified for loan forgiveness during the Biden administration.

As the clock ticks toward Sept. 30 and the scheduled end of the student loan moratorium, the pressure from the left side of the political spectrum is increasing. The president has asked the Justice Department and his Secretary of Education to review and report on what legal authority he may have to cancel student debt by executive action.

Speaker Pelosi’s cool reception to that idea appears to be a message that the left won’t win this fight.