During the 2020 presidential primaries, talking about relieving or even outright canceling student loan debt became all the rage. Even Joe Biden, who was much less aggressive on this issue than his fellow candidates, supported canceling $10,000 for each of the 43 million federal student loan borrowers in America. Now President Biden is facing mounting pressure to do more.
The president’s supporters point out that he has already canceled $17 billion, more than any other president in history. But advocates are agitating for him to go further, and warning of serious political consequences if he doesn’t. So what’s the case for and against, and are there other things that policymakers could and should be doing to deal with the problem? Our guest Michelle Dimino is Senior Policy Advisor in Education at Third Way, a center-left think tank in Washington DC and she’s here to unpack it all for us.
