How the left forced Biden’s hand on student loans

How the left forced Biden’s hand on student loans

Activists urge the president to cancel student debt in Washington. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)

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By Paul Waldman

Columnist

Today at 4:22 p.m. EST

President Biden’s relationship with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party was never going to be anything but complicated. If the troubled status of the Build Back Better bill wasn’t enough to convince you of that, consider the push and pull between the White House and congressional liberals over the question of student loans.

The difference, however, is that progressives didn’t need to wait for Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) to decide if they’d get what they’re after. All they needed to do was put enough pressure on the president to change his position. And his response to that pressure was a good test of how much power they’re able to wield.

So when the White House announced Wednesday that the government will be extending the moratorium on federal student loan payments until May 1 of next year, it showed that even when the president doesn’t seem inclined to do what progressives want, they can bring him around.

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Near the onset of the pandemic, federal student loan payments were suspended to lessen the burden on the 45 million Americans who had to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month while the economy was going into free fall. Forty-one million took advantage of the suspension. Since then, the moratorium has been extended multiple times — most recently in August, when the Biden administration said they were making a final extension to Jan. 31, 2022. “A smooth transition back into repayment is a high priority for the administration,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki recently said.

That angered key progressives on the Hill, who have been pushing Biden to change his mind. Some of them, notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), repeatedly called on Biden to at least extend the moratorium on payments and accrual of interest. Even better, they argued, he should use executive authority to simply forgive the federal loans people are carrying. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has also been a strong advocate for loan forgiveness, arguing that Biden has the ability to cancel loans up to $50,000.

Biden’s record on this question is complicated: On one hand, he has already forgiven billions of dollars in student debt for specific groups such as people with disabilities, and has begun fixing the badly dysfunctional loan forgiveness program for those in public service, which stopped working almost entirely under Donald Trump and then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

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On the other hand, Americans still owe a total of around $1.7 trillion in student loans. During the 2020 campaign, Biden proposed canceling $10,000 of debt per person, but he hasn’t yet kept that promise.

Of course, there are a lot of promises Biden hasn’t kept, mostly because he ran on a sweeping agenda that would require extensive legislation to fulfill. He hasn’t created a public health insurance option or a $15 minimum wage either.

Back during that campaign, progressives were both wary of Biden’s commitment to the liberal programs he was advocating and encouraged by how willingly he seemed to embrace so many of their priorities. The wiser heads among them understood that one of the core foundations of Joe Biden as a politician has always been his malleability, which presented both a challenge and an opportunity.

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Biden has plenty of beliefs and opinions, but he’s not an ideologue — and never has been. Which means that if the left can mobilize enough pressure to convince him that following their course is the best move for him and his party, he’ll do it.

That’s why he was so eager after the primaries ended to join with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to fashion an agenda: He knew that unity was vital to success in the election, and saw how the party’s center of gravity on issues had shifted.

Biden certainly could use a little party unity today, especially given the precarious state of Build Back Better (which, by the way, doesn’t do much at all for student loan borrowers other than raising the maximum Pell Grant amount by a measly $550 per year).

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Though Republicans may complain about another extension of the loan payment moratorium, it’s likely to be popular: A recent Data for Progress poll found that extending the moratorium was supported by 55 percent of Americans overall and 74 percent of Democrats.

Biden no doubt realized that it wouldn’t be a bad time to show his party’s base that he can use his power to accomplish something tangible to help people.

As Ocasio-Cortez has said, “We can change decisions and conditions” — if progressives put enough pressure on the president to convince him that the cost of spurning their demands is higher than whatever reward he thinks he’ll gain by saying no.

The bigger picture is that whether legislation on Capitol Hill is stalled or flowing freely, progressives are always going to have to keep Biden under pressure to get action on the things they care about. But this is one time, even if it’s only temporary, that they can say they won.