OPINION: This article contains commentary which reflects the author's opinion
President Joe Biden just delivered some very bad news to Democrats, especially the far-left wing of the party.
Biden said he would not eliminate $50,000 in student loan debt, shooting down a proposal that prominent Democrats introduced this month.
However, Biden did say that he is open to some level of loan forgiveness.
“I will not make that happen,” Biden said when an audience member asked him to commit to cancel at least $50,000 in debt.
“My point is: I understand the impact of debt, and it can be debilitating,” Biden said. “I am prepared to write off the $10,000 debt but not $50 [thousand], because I don’t think I have the authority to do it.”
Biden said he didn’t want to forgive the debts of borrowers who attended elite private schools like “Harvard and Yale and Penn,” arguing the money would be better repurposed toward early childhood education and making community college tuition-free.
Biden also questioned whether he has the authority to cancel billions of dollars in loans without Congress.
Biden faces growing pressure from his own party to take bolder action on student debt and to bypass Congress to do so.
Unsurprisingly, it took little time for New York socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to weigh in.
AOC wrote in two tweets:
1. Who cares what school someone went to? Entire generations of working class kids were encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong.
2. Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both.
“The case against student loan forgiveness is looking shakier by the day.
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!”
At the beginning of February, Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduced a resolution calling on Biden to erase $50,000 in student loan debt via executive order.
The lawmakers maintained that Biden could use existing executive authority under the Higher Education Act to order the Department of Education to “modify, compromise, waive or release” student loans.
It’s hard to gauge where Biden’s head is at.
He seems open to the idea but doesn’t think he has the legal authority to do so.
And he also has the most hardcore liberals in his party pushing him to do this, which would likely be challenged in the courts.
Time will tell what happens next, but Biden certainly just angered AOC and many of her allies.