Biden last April asked the Department of Education to write a note on its ability to repay student debt. Documents in October revealed that the note had existed since April 2021, but had not yet been released. Lawmakers urged Biden to release the note to provide reassurance about widespread student debt relief.
On April 1, 2021, President Joe Biden asked the Department of Education to prepare a note on its legal capacity to cancel student debt. On November 1, Insider received corrected documents from the Debt Collective – the nation’s first debtors’ union – indicating that the note had been in place since April 5, 2021 and was circulated among the White House leadership the same day. Now, a year after the note was created and two student loan extensions have been extended later, borrowers and lawmakers want answers. “While I welcome the extension of the student loan moratorium, I continue to believe that we owe it to the 43 million Americans in student loan debt to cancel it in full,” Minnesota spokesman Ilhan Omar told Insider. “Unfortunately, a year after her promise, we have not yet seen the memorandum promised by the administration to write off student debt.” When Biden was campaigning, his intentions to tackle the $ 1.7 trillion student debt crisis seemed clear. He promised voters that he would approve $ 10,000 in student loan for each federal borrower and said it would be a top priority for him in reforming long-term scrapped loan repayment schemes. While he has taken steps for the latter, the former remains unfulfilled and borrowers and lawmakers are becoming increasingly frustrated as Biden breaks into a promise many voters rely on. In October, before the corrected documents were released, Omar led her Democratic colleagues to give the president two weeks to deliver the memo. In January, she joined her 84 colleagues in pushing not only for the publication of the note, but also for an extension of the student loan pause, which Biden ended up implementing last week until August 31. The story goes on But more than a year has passed and Omar told Insider that it was time for Biden to be transparent with his constituents. “When the leaders of the Progressive Group and I met with the President earlier this month, we stressed the importance of not just suspending, but also canceling student debt,” Omar said. “The president has full power to cancel this debt,” he added, “and we hope he will.” When asked by the Insider to comment, a spokesman replied: “The Ministry of Education continues to evaluate its options for implementing large-scale debt write-off with executive action.”
The White House “chose to sit on its hands while families suffer financially”
While the vast majority of the student debt memorandum was written before Insider received it, the documents revealed some information about the in-house communication process regarding the creation of the note. For example, a Ministry of Education official wrote that based on internal emails in April 2021, the department “would probably prepare an update of the note prepared in February”, which suggests that the administration could have completed one more note. A corrected note on student debt write-off by the Ministry of Education on April 5, 2021. The Debt Collective Dext Collective’s press secretary Braxton Brownington told Insider at the time that choosing not to publish the note was a “political decision” and reiterated that sentiment in a statement this month. “It’s been a year since the White House was informed of its power to cancel student debt, and yet they have chosen to sit on their hands while families suffer financially,” Brewington said. “It’s clear that the suspension of student debt relief is not due to a misguided legal analysis, but rather to a lack of political will – which makes even less sense as the majority of Americans support student debt cancellation. It is time for Biden to take action. . “ Following Biden’s fourth student loan suspension last week, Insider reported that neither Democrats nor Republican lawmakers were happy with the relief. While the GOP wanted to end the widespread relief, Democrats wanted even greater relief, saying that if Biden could continue to extend the pause, there was no reason not to cancel the student debt and make permanent reforms in the student loan industry. It is unclear whether there will be more relief for student borrowers as soon as September arrives. “I am pleased to see the President extend the moratorium on student loans,” Omar wrote on Twitter. “Once this extension is over, he has to extend it again. And after that, again. And then again, and again … you really know what, why don’t we cancel it?” Read the original article in Business Insider
