The push by student loan borrower advocates and top Democrats to convince President Biden to enact widespread student loan forgiveness continues
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“We’re going to win,” said Senator Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at a virtual event last week organized by the Debt Collective, a debtor’s union advocating for student loan borrowers. “Student debt is an anchor bringing our people down. We ask President Biden with the flick of a pen, cancel student debt.”Schumer has become a leading proponent of student loan forgiveness, and has frequently joined with Senator Elizabeth Warren , Rep.
Biden promised support for student loan forgiveness during his presidential campaign in 2020. Specifically, Biden had proposed a program to cancel the undergraduate federal student loan debt for borrowers with incomes under $125,000 per year who attended public institutions or historically black colleges and universities and private minority-serving institutions . He also said he would support initiatives to cancel $10,000 in student loans for borrowers.
But Biden has stopped short of supporting larger amounts of student loan cancellation, and expressed opposition to the $50,000 figure proposed by leading advocates. Biden and White House officials have consistently expressed uncertainty about whether he would have sufficient legal authority to cancel student loan debt unilaterally through executive action, rather than signing a bill passed by Congress.
Borrower advocacy groups, student loan legal experts and scholars, and key members of Congress — including Senator Schumer — have argued that key provisions of existing federal law governing the higher education system, such as the Higher Education Act and the HEROES Act of 2003, contain clear enough language that vests broad powers in the Secretary of Education to wipe out borrowers’ federal student loan debt.