[We don’t like the word forgiveness because we don’t think
student debtors did anything wrong. Your generation didn’t have to
borrow like this. We’re just asking for parity.]
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JOE BIDEN CAN CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT. HE JUST WON’T.  
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Bridget Read
February 25, 2021
The Cut
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_ We don’t like the word forgiveness because we don’t think
student debtors did anything wrong. Your generation didn’t have to
borrow like this. We’re just asking for parity. _

Student debt ruined me!, Anya Quinn CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Student-loan debt is an enormous, damaging problem in the U.S. The
data is staggering: 40 million people are in the hole
[[link removed]] for
$1.6 trillion. Loans are so massive and incongruous with what college
graduates actually make that repayment plans stretch into adulthood
and beyond. Three million senior citizens are still paying them off.
Student-loan debt follows people through life [[link removed]], making it
hard for them to buy homes and cars and to start businesses. For
people of color, it has helped contribute to the racial wealth gap by
keeping families from holding on to their money. Joe Biden knows this.
He campaigned
[[link removed]] on
canceling “at least” $10,000 worth of debt for borrowers as soon
as he got into office, and on canceling debt totally for borrowers at
historic Black colleges and universities — but now that he is
actually in the executive seat, Biden is dashing hopes that he will
enact the policies that will truly fix the issue.

Leaders in Biden’s own party have come up with a plan for him to
immediately cancel $50,000 in debt for every student who’s taken out
loans in America. Last week, he shut it down dismissively
[[link removed]] in
a town hall — “I will not be doing that,” he said simply —
infuriating those who’d voted for him believing he’d provide
much-needed relief. Biden implied that canceling $50,000 would benefit
the elite and claimed he doesn’t have the constitutional authority
to cancel that much anyway. He repeated his willingness to cancel
$10,000, though the average borrower is out more than three times that
amount. Activists say this is a wholly arbitrary line in the sand:
“This is a very cynical thing,” says Astra Taylor
[[link removed]], an author and
documentary filmmaker who co-founded the Debt Collective
[[link removed]],
a union of debtors who are on debt strike for the first 100 days of
the Biden administration.

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At least one politician is refusing to take Biden’s compromise lying
down: Kendra Brooks [[link removed]], a city-council member from
Philadelphia, which helped carry Biden into office and where nearly
one in four adults carry student-loan debt. Today, in partnership with
the Debt Collective, Brooks introduced a resolution that goes even
further than cancellation of $50,000, calling on Biden to cancel all
debt. In a Zoom interview with the Cut, Brooks and Taylor pushed back
on Biden’s talking points and explained why debt cancellation is
actually common-sense policy.

BIDEN SAID THAT HE DOESN’T WANT TO CANCEL UP TO $50,000 BECAUSE HE
DOESN’T WANT MONEY TO GO TO DEBTORS WHO WENT TO “HARVARD AND YALE
AND PENN.” PEOPLE WERE UPSET THAT THIS STATEMENT IMPLIES ONLY
PRIVILEGED PEOPLE GO TO ELITE SCHOOLS, OR THAT THOSE PEOPLE WHO DO
TAKE OUT LOANS TO GO TO SCHOOLS LIKE HARVARD DON’T DESERVE TO GET
HELP WITH THEIR DEBT.

_Kendra Brooks_: This is just a misconception meant to deter folks
from supporting a benefit that can help so many people get out of
long-term, sustaining debt — debt that people like myself hold.
It’s important that we continue to refocus this conversation back on
working-class folks. One of the fastest-growing demographics of people
getting college degrees is Black women
[[link removed]];
when you translate that into student debt, the Black women carrying it
are still getting jobs that don’t allow for them to pay it back. The
divide-and-conquer tactic is a way to silence certain voices.

_Astra Taylor_: There are so many myths to debunk. Kendra is
absolutely right — statistics show that the population most burdened
by student debt is Black women. It’s one thing for somebody who’s
just an average citizen to think, “Oh, don’t people who go to
Harvard pay a lot?” But for policy-makers, for Biden to be invoking
this — he knows it’s not true. The data is so clear that full
student-debt cancellation will help working-class people. We should
not be determining our policy by this cliché, the stereotype of
Harvard graduates — 20,000 undergrads go to Harvard. There are 20
million undergrads. And only 2 or 3 percent of those Harvard grads
graduate with student debt. It makes no sense that these are the
people we’re shaping policy around.

WHAT ABOUT THE IDEA THAT HE HAS CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY TO CANCEL UP
TO $10,000, BUT NOT $50,000?

_Taylor_: He has the authority, and there’s no limit, whether
$10,000 or $50,000. These are arbitrary limits. Congress already
granted the authority to the Department of Education secretary in the
Higher Education Act of 1965, and legal experts are very clear on
this. I point people to Eileen Connor
[[link removed]],
I point people to Luke Herrine
[[link removed]].
Obviously, Senators Warren and Schumer [who introduced the plan to
cancel $50,000] agree.

Again, this is a very cynical thing for the president of the United
States to stand up there and cast aspersions on his own power. The
fact is, he doesn’t want that power. He wishes he didn’t have it.
He’d like to be able to say, “Oh, sorry, I’m not delivering on
my promises, and it’s because of Congress, it’s because of the
Republicans,” but this one’s actually on him. He can do this. And
so if he doesn’t, it’s a choice. Canceling student debt is a
winning issue. It’s popular with one in five Trump voters. Forty
percent of Black voters said they would consider sitting out the next
election if he doesn’t cancel it. He’s promised an FDR-style
presidency. He needs to deliver it.

SO WHERE IS THIS RELUCTANCE COMING FROM? WHY IS BIDEN WILLING TO
FORGIVE A SMALL AMOUNT, BUT NOT MORE THAN THAT?

_Taylor_: Joe Biden would never have even run on $10,000 of
cancellation if he hadn’t been pushed. This is a demand that has
come from social movements. This is a president who made his name as
the senator from Delaware, the credit-card capital of the world. The
legislation he fought the hardest for was the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform
bill, which made it harder for student debtors who had private loans
to have bankruptcy protections. He’s been a friend of creditors his
whole life.

The $10,000 is not based on anything rational — his campaign can’t
defend it. When they’re asked why $10,000, they don’t even have an
argument. The $10,000 is kind of like them saying, “We know this is
a problem. We need to do something, but we just don’t have the
courage to actually criticize the system that we helped create.”

_Brooks_: When I think about this $10,000 limit, I always wonder, now
that I am in politics, what is the behind-the-scenes conversation that
is driving that narrative? I do think [Biden] sees the moral ground of
debt forgiveness, but the political will and moral ground is an
interesting needle to thread. When people say to me, “Do you take a
certain type of money?” I’m always like, “No!” Because I
don’t ever want to be put in that position to have to make a choice
of my conscience. Once you’ve already stepped in that world, it’s
very hard to peddle back.

In November we took to the streets, you know, Black women for Biden.
We weren’t excited about you, but we pulled you along and pushed you
across the finish line. Now it’s like: What are you going to do to
make our lives better? When are you going to do the things that you
said you were going to do to make life better for women in Philly,
Detroit, Atlanta, all of us that showed out and made sure you came
across the finish line?

FOR THE DEBT COLLECTIVE AND OTHERS, EVEN $50,000 IS NOT ENOUGH. WHY DO
YOU SUPPORT DEBT JUBILEE OVER DEBT FORGIVENESS?

_Taylor_: We don’t like the word forgiveness because we don’t
think student debtors did anything wrong. Joe Biden got up there at
his town hall and was like, “I mortgaged my house and my kids took
on debt” [to pay for their college educations]. Well, Joe Biden, you
didn’t go into debt for college! Your generation didn’t have to
borrow like this. We’re just asking for parity. I looked [it] up
— he paid
[[link removed]] something
like $1,000 to go to law school. So this really isn’t such a radical
demand. The guy actually lived it himself.

The scholars who came up with $50,000 three years ago, by the way,
they are now saying $75,000 because that’s how much the debt has
grown in three years. Derrick Hamilton, the leading scholar on the
racial wealth gap, says cancel it all. If you want to have the maximum
impact in terms of racial justice, then cancel it all. Part of this is
just admitting the system’s broken. Why give people $0 income-based
repayment [a plan offered by the government that essentially admits
that a borrower will never pay their debt back] for the rest of their
lives, where this debt’s just hanging over them, and not just say
“Fuck it, we’ll cancel it now”? It just makes more sense.

_Brooks_: And Biden saying he had to mortgage his house to pay his
children’s debt — we’re talking about Black women who can’t
even buy a house because of student-loan debt. I was unable to find a
job with comparable pay for two years, and I ended up losing
everything, including my house. And my daughter had to leave Norfolk
State and come home because I couldn’t afford her college tuition.
She ended up going into the military to cover her student-loan debt.
And that’s not an uncommon story. It’s so off-base and kind of out
of touch with the reality of so many people; most parents can’t just
mortgage off their house to pay student-loan debt — are you kidding
me? I’m still paying my own student-loan debt!

THE RESOLUTION COUNCILMEMBER BROOKS INTRODUCED CALLS ON THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT TO “ENACT A PLAN BY THE END OF PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FIRST
100 DAYS IN OFFICE TO CANCEL ALL STUDENT LOAN DEBT AND BEGIN THE
TRANSITION TO EDUCATION AS A PUBLIC GOOD.” EVEN IF BIDEN REMAINS
UNWILLING TO CANCEL MORE THAN $10,000, WHAT DO YOU HOPE THE RESOLUTION
WILL ACCOMPLISH?

_Brooks_: The resolution strengthens the conversation and the movement
around student debt. There is debt shame and stigma that people do not
talk about, especially when we’re talking about upwardly mobile
Black professionals who are swimming in student loans; no one would
dare talk about it openly. Introducing this in city council along with
my colleagues gives voice to the folks who wouldn’t necessarily
speak up against this.

I think we’re going to pass the resolution. And debt cancellation in
general is going to be a major movement. In Texas, people are
rejecting their utility bills. In Philly, they want payment plans for
rent, for medical debt. Yeah. In general, this is going to be a larger
conversation in order for our economy to recover.

_Taylor_:_ _I think other cities are going to copy this resolution
and follow the councilwoman’s lead. It’s so symbolically
important, because the divide-and-conquer tactic is all about making
this an individual issue. What about this kind of debt or that kind of
debt? Did you make the right choice? For this resolution to say,
“This benefits Philadelphia, a community. It would be hugely
important to the people who live here” — it’s just so important
to give this institutional frame. When you see 45 million people have
student debt and are struggling, that’s a sign that it’s a
structural issue, it’s an institutional issue.

_Bridget Read is a writer at The Cut. @bridgetgillard_

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