Biden To Cancel At Least $10K Student’s Loan Debt

By Staff, Agencies 

US President Joe Biden has announced his government will forgive at least $10,000 in student loans for many debt-laden university graduates in the United States, in a move that progressive activists and lawmakers welcomed but said does not go far enough.

In a tweet on Wednesday morning, Biden said students who received federal Pell Grants for lower-income families would get $20,000 in debt forgiveness, while those who did not would get $10,000. The relief only applies to those earning less than $125,000 annually, he said.

“Both of these targeted actions are for families that need it the most, working- and middle-class people hit especially hard during the pandemic,” Biden said during a news conference at the White House later in the day.

He said his administration, which also extended a freeze on student loan repayments through the end of the year, hopes to “provide more breathing room for people” burdened by their debt. “When this happens, the whole economy is better off,” Biden told reporters.

The forgiveness could impact 8 million borrowers automatically, the Department of Education said, while others would need to apply.

Members of Biden’s own Democratic Party have pushed him to forgive as much as $50,000 per borrower, arguing that the debt makes it impossible for younger Americans to save for down payments on a home or other big consumer purchase.

“President Biden’s student loan socialism is a slap in the face to every family who sacrificed to save for college, every graduate who paid their debt, and every American who chose a certain career path or volunteered to serve in our Armed Forces in order to avoid taking on debt. This policy is astonishingly unfair,” Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday.

But the White House said in a statement that “skyrocketing cumulative federal student loan debt—$1.6 trillion and rising for more than 45 million borrowers—is a significant burden on America’s middle class”, and is even more crushing for vulnerable Americans.

“The student debt burden also falls disproportionately on Black borrowers. Twenty years after first enrolling in school, the typical Black borrower who started college in the 1995-96 school year still owed 95% of their original student debt,” the statement added.

Most of the student loan debt in the US is held by the federal government, the result of private and state-backed university tuition fees that are substantially higher than in most other countries.