"It’s that inequality that lies at the heart of it that has pulled me into this debate from the ... [+]
Former presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is continuing her crusade to slash Americans’ student loan debt.
Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the federal government has hit pause on Americans’ obligation to repay their student loans. That relief is due to end on January 31, 2022.
Warren has joined her congressional colleagues in urging President Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt for each borrower. A nonbinding resolution proposed by Democrats asks Biden to issue an executive order that would cancel 80% of the student loans owed by 36 million borrowers.
In an interview with the publication Inside Higher Ed posted this morning, Warren describes why she is so passionate about helping indebted graduates and those who have debt but no degree.
“Through the decades, the cost of higher ed has increasingly been shifted away from taxpayers and on to families,” she said. “Families that can afford to send their kid to college—and that kid can graduate debt free—have moved their next generation forward faster and further than families that don’t have those resources. It’s that inequality that lies at the heart of it that has pulled me into this debate from the beginning.”
In other words, Warren sees student debt as a prime driver of the expanding wealth gap in the United States. Rich families can afford to cover the rising cost of higher education while disadvantaged families are dragged down by debts that follow them into adulthood.
Warren also referenced data that shows student debt is carried disproportionately by students of color. The Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University has found that white borrowers owed 6% of their loans 20 years after starting college. Black borrowers owed 95% of their loans.
Biden has said that he doesn’t know if he has the legal authority to cancel student debt. But Warren is confident that he can do so “with the stroke of a pen.” When she was running for president, lawyers at Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center laid out the legal argument for debt cancellation by the executive branch.
“Student loan debt gives a deep insight into who we are as a country,” Warren said. “We need to make real changes, and we need to make them now.”
