- Chuck Schumer made a final plea to Biden, urging him to go as big as possible on student debt relief.
- Biden is expected to announce broad loan forgiveness today, along with a payment pause extension.
- Schumer and advocates have argued the $10,000 Biden is considering isn't enough.
After over two years, broad student-loan forgiveness could finally be here. And a leading Democrat wants to ensure President Joe Biden doesn't miss the opportunity to go big.
On Tuesday night, per a Democrat familiar, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called Biden to make a final push for the president to cancel as much student debt as possible. Biden is expected to make a final decision on Wednesday — reportedly $10,000 in debt cancellation for borrowers making under $125,000 a year — and many Democrats, Schumer included, have argued $10,000 is not enough.
Schumer, along with some of his Democratic colleagues, have continued to push for $50,000 in student-loan forgiveness, even after Biden rejected that amount of relief in April. During an AFL-CIO roundtable in June, Schumer vowed to continue fighting until $50,000 in relief is achieved.
"We need the working people of America, we need this powerful, progressive, thoughtful and caring labor movement to make this issue the kind of issue that resonates from one end of America to the other," Chuck Schumer said, adding that student-loan borrowers "can't do all the things people look forward to because every month that damn payment is on their backs."
"Let's fight and persist until we succeed in canceling $50,000 in student debt," Schumer said.
Still, it's looking like Biden will stick with the $10,000 amount, which he pledged to approve on the campaign trail. Along with an announcement of broad relief, millions of federal borrowers are also awaiting news of a further extension of the student-loan payment pause, currently set to expire one week from today, on August 31. In anticipation of what will likely be further relief, many Republican lawmakers have been on the offense. In a late blog post on Tuesday, the GOP House education committee wrote that further extending relief is "unsustainable, and the Biden administration's plan to kick the can further down the road is causing significant problems for student borrowers and loan servicers."
But some advocates are disappointed to hear what the president is considering. President of the NAACP Derrick Johnson wrote in a statement that "if the rumors are true, we've got a problem. And tragically, we've experienced this so many times before."
"The interstate highway system devastated Black communities. Welfare reform tossed poor people of color by the wayside. The senate's failure to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act failed to save Black lives," Johnson said. "President Biden's decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people - especially Black women - behind. This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020."
