President Joe Biden is reportedly dropping a promise he made during his campaign – which may lose Biden the support of the progressive wing of his party.
Biden’s far-left promise of student loan forgiveness seems to have gone by the wayside and is being dropped from this upcoming budget.
“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 reported this weekend.
However, Biden’s $10,000 forgiveness promise seems to be “off the table” for this budget, the report added, noting of Biden’s recent interview with The New York Times.
“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 also 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.
Top Democrats have called for executive action from Biden to make the average American taxpayer carry the burden of up to $50,000 in federal student loan debt for each individual. Those same Democrats wanted the action done in Biden’s first 100 days in office.
Biden, although the White House later backtracked, has suggested he won’t go near such an amount. The White House has reportedly 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.”
At a town hall event in February, Biden told his audience 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.”
Far left Dems including Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went after Biden online following the town hall event.
“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 and Sen. Elizabeth Warren publicly agreed with AOC.
Author: Laurence Waters
