President Joe Biden is agonizing over ordering a sweeping cancellation of student loan debt, despite pressure from Democrats -- including Vice President Kamala Harris -- eager for a political win before midterm elections, according to several people familiar with the matter.
While he said last month that he’s considering “some debt reduction,” Biden has not made up his mind about many details of the plan, including how much debt to forgive per borrower, the people said. And though White House officials have debated the contours of a forgiveness program internally for more than a year, there is no real consensus on the best path forward.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and a deputy director of the National Economic Council, Bharat Ramamurti, are among the aides urging Biden to announce some form of student loan forgiveness.
The White House’s hesitance on the issue represents the latest fracture within the Democratic party, which Biden has failed to unite around his ambitious economic agenda. But this time it’s the Democratic rank-and-file who haven’t yet persuaded the president to use his power for broad loan relief.
Advocates view the move as having few political downsides. Many progressive lawmakers have called on the White House to cancel at least $50,000 in debt per borrower, if not the entire loan portfolio held by the Education Department, which totals more than $1.6 trillion.
Ramamurti, a former aide to Senator Elizabeth Warren who is one of the foremost progressives in the White House, has been especially vocal about a forgiveness program, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. He views canceling student debt as not only politically popular but also a tool to reduce US racial and class inequities.
Biden’s reservations center on both the legality of canceling debt through executive action and whether broad forgiveness would be good policy, the people said. He unequivocally supports Congress passing a law to forgive $10,000 in debt per borrower, one White House official said.
The people asked not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.
“The consideration of what you can do with executive authority and action, it always takes a long time,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “And there are significant policy questions here -- good policy questions.”
Laying Groundwork
While some in the education community are skeptical of Biden’s commitment to forgiving student loans, regarding him as having been pushed to support the idea by Warren and other liberal opponents in the 2020 Democratic primary, the government has been laying groundwork for the move since he took office.
Policy experts throughout the administration have for months studied options for a forgiveness program such as income requirements, whether to include graduate school loans or only undergrad debt, and how it would apply to people who took out debt for school but never received a degree.
More than a year ago, Biden ordered the Justice and Education departments to determine the extent of his power to forgive student debt. The Education Department recently released a year-old “pre-decisional & deliberative” legal memo on the issue, but fully redacted its text.
Those six blank pages are only fueling speculation about the administration’s plans as midterm elections approach in November.
An Education Department spokesperson said the administration wants long-term change to make college more affordable and officials are still considering options for further executive action.
Within the White House, plans have been under development by officials on the National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisers and Domestic Policy Council. Susan Rice, the DPC director, isn’t among officials pushing Biden for any sweeping move, two of the people said.