["Its almost like the American people want government to meet the
scale of the crisis," said New York Congressman Mondaire Jones.]
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BY 17-POINTS, VOTERS WANT BIDEN TO CANCEL $50K IN STUDENT DEBT  
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Andrea Germanos
February 19, 2021
Common Dreams
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_ "It's almost like the American people want government to meet the
scale of the crisis," said New York Congressman Mondaire Jones. _

A college student voices his opinion on education and student debt in
Zuccotti Park on the 23rd day of the Occupy Wall Street movement in
New York City, Phineas Azcuy CC BY-SA 2.0

 

As President Joe Biden faces sustained criticism for dismissing calls
to cancel $50,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, new
polling released Thursday reveals strong support for him to "go big"
[[link removed]] and
carry out that proposal.

Data for Progress found
[[link removed]] (pdf)
that 54% of likely voters think Biden should use his executive
authority to cancel $50,000 in student debt compared to just 37% who
said he should not forgive that debt.

"It's almost like the American people want government to meet the
scale of the crisis," wrote Rep. Mondaire Jones
(D-N.Y.)—a co-sponsor
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legislation introduced
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December calling on Biden to cancel up to $50,000 in Federal student
loan debt—in a tweet responding to the poll. 

As Data for Progress' Prerna Jagadeesh wrote in a blog post 
[[link removed]]analyzing
the findings, Biden should view student debt cancellation as "not a
liability but rather an opportunity, given how popular student loan
debt cancellation is with the American people."

The polling of 1,219 likely voters took place January 6-January 11.
The poll's margin of error is ±2.8 percentage points.

The progressive group also queried respondents about cancelling just
$10,000 in student debt per borrower. It found that 52%  backed that
proposal compared to 38% who said Biden should not forgive that amount
of student debt.

"As the chart shows, support was slightly higher in the $50,000
condition, though within the margin of error," wrote Jagadeesh. "There
is no evidence that going smaller will help Biden."

Data for Progress' poll came the same week Biden said
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a _CNN_ town hall that he "will not" cancel $50,000 in student loan
debt, telling the audience that he objected to the forgiveness of
"billions of dollars of debt for people who have gone to Harvard and
Yale and Penn" and said the funds should instead be directed "for
early education for young children who... come from disadvantaged
circumstances."

"Who cares what school someone went to?" Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(D-N.Y.), another co-sponsor of the debt cancellation
proposal, tweeted
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Biden's comments. "Entire generations of working class kids were
encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is
wrong."

"Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for
student loan forgiveness. We can have both," she added. 

Further evidence against Biden's objection to cancelling $50,000 in
student came
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with a report from social science research group Jain Family Institute
showing how the action would lessen the nation's economic inequality.

"With rising debt levels seen in all groups and states, coupled with
the current pandemic-induced recession and its unemployment effects,
any forgiveness policy is also an opportunity to stimulate the
economy, in addition to its egalitarian effects," the report said.

"There is no evidence that going smaller will help Biden."
—Prerna Jagadeesh, Data for Progress Passage of the $50,000 debt
cancellation proposal would mean "[n]early 85% of young borrowers in
the poorest communities would become free of student debt."

The research also shows that "blanket forgiveness is progressive: for
lower-income communities, a cancellation of a given dollar amount of
student debt means a greater proportional reduction in outstanding
debt, so a cancellation of this type reduces student debt-to-income
disparities between the rich and the poor," the report found. "That is
more evident the higher the dollar amount of the cancellation, to the
point that a total cancellation of all outstanding student debt
reduces debt-to-income disparities the most."

Data for Progress' Jagadeesh also noted that "cancelling a full
$50,000 of student loan debt per person via executive order won't just
be a one-time handout to college educated people—it will help people
who did not receive a college degree too." She continued:

Cancelling student debt will improve the economy overall and
strengthen every component of President Biden's pandemic recovery
package. Every month, the average American student debt holder makes
loan payments of $200 to $300. Cancelling that debt would be akin to
giving those people an extra stimulus check every month. That's not to
mention that people drowning in student loan debt are considerably
less likely to start a small business or buy a home—cancelling
$50,000 of their debt will enable these people to meaningfully
participate in the American economy for the first time in their lives.

Speaking with _Democracy Now!_ Thursday, filmmaker and Debt
Collective organizer Astra Taylor stressed that President Biden
possesses the authority to cancel all student debt. "It was granted by
Congress decades ago. And he can erase all federal student loans. And
he should," she said.

Joining Taylor on the segment was Braxton Brewington, a digital
strategist with the Debt Collective. He called the decision not to
cancel student debt "policy assault" and said that those who "would
benefit the most from student loan debt [cancellation] are individuals
like me, Black and Brown borrowers, mostly Black women borrowers, who,
frankly, have upwards of $35,000, $50,000, hundreds of thousands of
dollars' worth of debt."

But, Brewington added, "this is an intergenerational issue," noting
that seniors can get part of "their Social Security checks garnished
for student loan debt, which is insane."

Taylor, in her remarks, said student debt cancellation should be
framed as "an economic justice issue, it's a racial justice issue, and
canceling student debt is also a democracy issue, because we all are
entitled to live in a society where our fellow people can pursue
education."

_Andrea Germanos
[[link removed]] is
senior editor and a staff writer at Common Dreams._

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