It's Friday and there may be some great news coming out of the White House this weekend. During a recent interview, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain revealed that President Joe Biden has requested that Education Secretary Miguel Cardona prepare a report regarding student loan debt. Specifically, the President is looking to find out if he can legally cancel $50,000 of student loan debt for every borrower in the country. While this is a promising sign, this process will take some time to produce any real results.
"Hopefully we'll see that in the next few weeks," White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said.
"And then he'll look at that legal authority, he'll look at the policy issues around that and he'll make a decision."
Offering student loan forgiveness for Americans is not a new initiative for the President, but the amount of forgiveness that Klain specified is. Along the campaign trail, Biden promoted a plan to offer $10,000 in student loan forgiveness for Americans. Now, he has upped the amount to $50,000. This is the amount of student debt forgiveness that Sens. Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have pushed for in the past. Over the last three months, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has publicly called for the President to issue an executive order to forgive $50,000 in student loan debt.
"You don't need Congress," Schumer said.
"All you need is the flick of a pen."
If Biden were to move forward with this effort, many marginalized groups would be relieved of a significant financial burden. At a glance, Black Americans face $25,000 more in student debt than white Americans. Diving deeper, this proposal would take the average student loan debt of Black Americans from $52,726 and knock it down to approximately $3,000 per person.
“We’re all here to call on President Biden to do right by the movement that elected him and to use his executive authority to cancel $50,000 in federal student loan debt,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley said.
“If President Biden is serious about closing the racial wealth gap, if President Biden seeks to build back better, then he must use his executive authority to issue broad-based, across-the-board student debt cancellation."
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