President Biden is nearing a decision on student loan debt forgiveness, with the president and his team zeroing in on canceling $10,000 per borrower, with some potential caveats.
White House officials cautioned no decision has been finalized as Biden continues to weigh his options. The president is scheduled to speak at the Naval Academy’s commencement ceremony on Friday and at the University of Delaware’s ceremony on Saturday.
Multiple reports indicated Biden considered using the weekend commencement ceremonies to announce some student debt forgiveness, with The Washington Post reporting the timing was changed in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children dead. A White House official disputed that was the case, however.
“No decisions have been made yet — but as a reminder no one has been required to pay a single dime of student loans since the president took office,” deputy press secretary Vedant Patel said.
Multiple sources told The Hill in late April that Biden was looking at canceling at least $10,000 in student debt, and indications are the White House appears to have settled on that number even as they work through potential limits on who the loan cancellation would benefit.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the latest iteration of the plan called for capping the debt forgiveness to individuals who earned less than $150,000 last year, or $300,000 for married couples. It is also unclear if the cancellation would apply to all student loan debt, or just undergraduate students.
Biden in the 2020 campaign supported forgiving at least $10,000 in federal student loans per person after several other candidates made student loan forgiveness a key part of their platforms.
Since taking office, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have repeatedly pushed Biden on the issue, insisting it would provide immediate relief to minorities and low- and middle-income families. Schumer has called for canceling up to $50,000 in student debt per borrower.
While that large of a sum has been publicly ruled out, Biden has in recent weeks made increasingly clear he is prepared to provide some student debt forgiveness.
“I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction, but I’m in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness and I’ll have an answer on that in the next couple of weeks,” Biden said on April 28, days after he reportedly told members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus he was open to forgiving some student loans.
The White House has yet to give an updated timeline in the month since Biden said a decision was a couple weeks out, but officials have pointed to actions that have helped student loan borrowers over the past year and a half.
Biden last month extended the pandemic moratorium on federal student loan payments and interest accrual through August. Loan payments were first paused in March 2020 early in the pandemic under then-President Trump, and the moratorium has been extended multiple times since.
The White House has repeatedly said Biden is prepared to sign legislation canceling student loan debt but in the meantime is weighing what authority the president has to unilaterally wipe out some debt.
Conservative critics have pushed for student loan payments to resume, arguing the moratorium has cost the federal government billions of dollars and that any widespread forgiveness would disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. A study from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that found roughly 75 percent of student loan repayments come from the top 40 percent of earners.