Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer are calling for President Joe Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in student debt. Yahoo! Finance reports that Warren and Schumer, along with Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), reintroduced the measure in a press conference on Friday. The group of Democratic leaders has noted that per The Higher Education Act of 1965, the U.S. president the authority to forgive student loan debt by way of an executive order.
“Canceling student loan debt is the single most effective executive action that President Biden can take to kick start this economy,” said Warren. She later added, “Canceling student loan debt is good for you whether you have student loan debt or not because it is good for our economy.” Currently, the total student loan debt for about 45 million Americans is $1.7 trillion. The lawmakers also pointed out that the amount of student loan debt disproportionately impacts people of color. “A disproportionate burden of student debt falls on people of color,” said new Senate Majority Leader Schumer.
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40% of people getting crushed with student loan debt don’t have a college diploma. Last night I told @chrislhayes: President Biden should use his authority to #CancelStudentDebt both to help those struggling families and to boost our economy for everyone. pic.twitter.com/VZvHtupalA
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 5, 2021
Rep. Pressley spoke at length about the debt cancellation measure, saying that it provides Biden an opportunity to “be bold and responsive to the movement that elected him.” She added, “Let me be clear — the student debt crisis has always been a racial and economic justice issue. But for too long, the narrative has excluded Black and Latinx communities and the ways in which this debt has exacerbated deeply entrenched racial and economic inequities in our nation. These disparities didn’t just magically occur.”
“They are the consequences of generations of systemic racism, discrimination, and what I call policy violence that has systemically denied Black and Latinx families the opportunity to build wealth, forcing our families to take on greater rates of student debt for the chance at the same degree as our white counterparts,” the Massachusetts Democrat leader went on to say. “Take the 2008 financial crisis for example, when lawmakers bailed out Wall Street and abandoned Black and brown communities who lost everything. Many have yet to recover.” Pressley concluded, “So as we work to ensure an equitable recovery to the current crisis, we cannot afford to simply tinker around the edges.”
