Student loan debt: Schumer maintains pressure on Biden to cancel $ 50,000 debt

Student loan debt: Schumer maintains pressure on Biden to cancel $ 50,000 debt

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The New York Democrat said on Monday that the Justice Department is currently conducting a legal review of whether Biden has the authority to issue general pardon on student debt.

Biden expressed support for the cancellation of $ 10,000 per borrower, but argued that the government should not forgive debts of people who studied at “Harvard, Yale and Penn”.

He also indicated that he believes that Congress should make changes through legislation, which would make it more difficult to undo them – although White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the government was open to reviewing an executive option.

When asked on Monday whether Congress should take the first step, Schumer argued that it would take too long and that there are many other important priorities at the moment the Senate is focused.

“I think it will be much more difficult to do legislatively. We have not seen our Republican colleagues seize this opportunity,” he said in a press conference with his colleagues Warren and Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

Long-term debate

More progressive members of the Democratic Party have been calling for the cancellation of student debt for years.

Warren and Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders presented plans for pardon when they ran for the Democratic presidential primaries. Biden submitted a policy proposal to forgive $ 10,000 per borrower only after the pandemic started and he was the likely candidate.

Lawmakers introduced a similar resolution last year, requiring the Trump administration to forgive student loan debt – but former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos called the proposal a “gift from the government.”

House Democrats included a clause to cancel $ 10,000 per borrower in a broad Covid relief bill passed in May that was never passed in the then Republican-led Senate.

The Covid relief bill that Biden signed last week includes a clause that would make any future student debt forgiveness tax-free – but did not actually cancel the debt.

Payment deferrals extended to September

In one of his first acts in office, Biden extended the pause in student loan and interest payments, a Covid relief benefit instituted by Congress last year and which had already been renewed by the Trump administration. Federal student loan borrowers will not be required to make payments until October 1, at the very least.

It also supports the provision of free community colleges for all, making four-year public colleges free for students from families earning less than $ 125,000 a year and changing the existing system to ensure that student loans are more affordable.

A broad cancellation of federal student loan debt would be unprecedented. But a memo from lawyers at the Harvard Legal Services Center and its Predatory Student Loan Project says the Department of Education has the power to do that.

The department already has some more targeted debt cancellation policies in place. It eliminates debts of defrauded students as well as disabled veterans. Biden could provide relief to hundreds of thousands of borrowers just by expanding these programs, according to the National Student Legal Defense Network.

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