By the standards of U.S. public policy and media opinion, we've got an enormous victory, and a shockingly scandalous extravagance, to shout about in Biden's cancellation of a portion of student debt.

We'll take the victory, but only as a step in the right direction. A column by RootsAction's India Walton and Sam Rosenthal has been widely published making the case that we need the cancellation of all student debt and the creation of free public college.



Biden says this debt cancellation will cost the U.S. government $24 billion per year.

But is that a lot of money, or is it just a lot of money to give to people who tend not to fund political campaigns or media outlets?

The same U.S. government is delaying expansion of Social Security while crafting more tax breaks for the wealthy, and yet has found over $60 billion thus far "for Ukraine" but mostly going straight to U.S. weapons companies, which will also be benefitting from over $800 billion going to the Pentagon. And the media silence is deafening.



Maybe the money for student debt relief is just a lot of money for something that Congress Members now publicly worry about as a threat to military recruitment.

If the money were going to health insurance companies, it would apparently be perfectly acceptable. The same U.S. government is talking about ceasing to provide free COVID shots and treatments -- without moving to Medicare For All, even though studies suggest that doing so would reduce healthcare spending by $400 billion per year, not to mention saving 70,000 lives per year in normal times and 338,000 lives thus far among those lost to COVID.



We seem to have a great governmental reluctance to spend money when it can do a lot of good or save a lot of lives. The U.S. has seized billions of dollars belonging to and desperately needed by the people of Afghanistan, and we need to keep insisting that it give that money back.



We're also continuing to push for a real Green New Deal as far more valuable than the Senate filibuster -- and to demand the abandonment of the #DirtyDeal made to appease the fossil fuel interests that have corrupted Senator Joe Manchin.

In other RootsAction work, we're pressing for re-joining the Iran nuclear agreement.

RootsAction's Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have a new column about the midterm elections. And we continue to work to create automatic voter registration and to undo the Electoral College.

In DefuseNuclearWar news, you can pencil these dates in on your calendar:

• October 2: Defuse Nuclear War livestream.
• October 14: Defuse Nuclear War informational picket lines at local Congressional offices
• October 16: Defuse Nuclear War day of actions everywhere, on the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis

Help us do more! This work is only possible with your financial support. Please chip in $5 now.



-- The RootsAction.org Team

www.RootsAction.org