Biden Breaks Campaign Promise to Forgive Student Loan Debt
Plan to forgive $10,000 in federal student loans for every borrower is dropped from budget
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Democrat Joe Biden has broken a major campaign pledge by dropping the student loan forgiveness plan he promised from the upcoming budget, according to reports.
During his presidential campaign, Biden vowed to wipe $10,000 in student loan debts for every borrower - a popular promise, for obvious reasons.
According to a new report, however, Biden has already scrapped the plan.
“Four months into his term, the pressure remains on Biden to follow through on a campaign promise to forgive $10,000 in federal student loans for every borrower,” Yahoo Finance reports.
However, the report adds that Biden’s $10,000 forgiveness promise is now “off the table” for this budget.
During a recent interview with The New York Times, Biden backtracked on his campaign promise, stating that he doesn't "agree" that student debts should be forgiven.
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“The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree,” Biden told to Times last week.
The Washington Post on Friday, too, reported that “several ‘ambitious Biden campaign pledges’ will likely be left out of the annual White House budget — including student debt forgiveness,” CNBC noted.
“President Biden is still waiting for the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education to report on their review of his legal authority to forgive student loan debt through executive order,” said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz, CNBC reported.
Kantrowitz emphasized that Biden likely does not have the authority to forgive such debt, bouncing the issue to Congress.
“Only after he receives that report, which I expect will find that he does not have the legal authority, will the ball be in Congress’ court,” he explained.
Notably, leading Democrats have called for executive action from Biden to wash away up to a stunning $50,000 in federal student loan debt, and they wanted it done in Biden’s first 100 days.
Biden, although the White House later backtracked, has suggested he won’t go near such an amount.
As highlighted by The Daily Wire, the White House has made it clear that “Biden is able, under authority ceded to him under the Higher Education Act, to forgive around $10,000 per individual federal student loan borrower through an executive order, but that forgiving any amount above that must go through Congress.”
Biden reiterated this during a February town hall event:
Biden told his audience, in a town hall … that he would not sign on to a plan to forgive $50,000 in student loan debt for individual federal borrowers, telling a questioner, bluntly, that, “I will not make that happen.”
“My point is: I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating,” Biden said, noting that his children were among those who incurred hundreds of thousands in student debt from undergraduate and graduate studies.
“I am prepared to write off the $10,000 debt but not fifty because I don’t think I have the authority to do it.”
Unsurprisingly, this did not go over well with fellow radical Democrats.
Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, went after Biden online.
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"The case against student loan forgiveness is looking shakier by the day,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote.
"We’ve got the *Senate Majority Leader* on board to forgive $50k.
"Biden’s holding back, but many of the arguments against it just don’t hold water on close inspection.
"We can and should do it. Keep pushing!”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) publicly agreed with AOC.
