What The Student Loan Forgiveness Memo Means For Mass Student Debt

New details about the Biden administration’s exploration of widespread student loan forgiveness have emerged this week. Student loan borrowers, allied advocacy organizations, and many Democrats in Congress have been pushing President Biden for months to fulfill his campaign promise to enact broad cancellation of student debt. Advocates are urging him to cancel $50,000 or more in student loans per borrower, which would wipe out all federal student loan debt for over 30 million borrowers. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others have argued that the President has sufficient legal authority to act unilaterally, without Congress, and can cancel student debt “with the flick of a pen.”Biden made promises during his presidential campaign to support $10,000 in student loan forgiveness for borrowers, which could still wipe out the student loan debt of 10 to 15 million borrowers. But he has been reluctant to support higher amounts of loan forgiveness, and he has expressed skepticism that he has sufficient legal authority to act alone. In April, Biden ordered Education Department officials to conduct a formal legal review and draft a memo to determine whether there is sufficient legal authority for a president to pursue widespread student loan forgiveness. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), as well as legal experts at several national student loan borrower advocacy organizations, have argued that language in the Higher Education Act and the HEROES Act of 2003 provides the President with such authority. But others have disagreed, and if the President’s actions are not sufficiently rooted in law, it could subject any executive-based student loan forgiveness initiative to court challenges. The Biden administration had initially suggested that a formal memo containing the administration’s legal conclusions would be released within weeks of the original April announcement, but months then passed with no action. Progressive House Democrats sent a letter to Biden in October, urging him to release the student loan forgiveness memo, but the group’s October 22 deadline came and went, with no action. But earlier this week, as first reported by The New Yorker, activists at The Debt Collective — a debtor’s union and advocacy organization for student loan borrowers — obtained a copy of the purported student loan forgiveness memo through a Freedom of Information Act request. The memo, titled “The Secretary's Legal Authority for Broad-Based Debt Cancellation,” appears to have been completed in April (at around the time of the White House’s announcement), and its contents are almost entirely redacted. It is coded as “PRE-DECISIONAL & DELIBERATIVE,” suggesting that its contents (whatever they may be) had not been formally approved by administration officials, at least back in April. All data is taken from the source: http://forbes.com Article Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adammins... #student #newspaper #newstodayoncnn #newsworldabc #newstodaymsnbc #newsworldbbc #