Sen. Elizabeth Warren [D-Mass.], who it looks like will not get her wish of becoming the next Treasury Secretary, called on President-elect Joe Biden to cancel “billions” of dollars in outstanding student loans, saying it is the “single most effective executive action available for massive economic stimulus.”
1. Biden-Harris can cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt, giving tens of millions of Americans an immediate financial boost and helping to close the racial wealth gap. This is the single most effective executive action available for a massive economic stimulus.— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) November 12, 2020
Despite the urgings of the one-time presidential candidate, it does not appear likely that President-elect Biden will move forward with such a plan, unless he has the support of Congress to do so, according to a published report.
The amount of student loan debt was a hot-button issue among Democrats during the presidential campaign, and was followed up by a plan from Sen. Warren and Sen. Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.], the Senate Minority Leader, calling for the cancellation of $50,000 of student loan debt for all federal student loan borrowers.
Sen. Warren and some legal scholars believes that the Higher Education Act provides a mechanism for the president to broadly cancel student loan debt without needing Congressional approval to do so, but others are not so sure and think that any such action would be met with legal challenges.
So far, Biden has not made any announcements about how he plans to address the situation, if he has any plans to do so at all. As with many of the intended plans of the President-elect, it may come down to the Senate runoff elections in Georgia to determine how much of his agenda he will be able to act on.
