Why are activists horrified by Biden’s plan to cancel $10,000 in student debt?

President Joe Biden is nearing a resolution to cancel up to $10,000 in student loan debt before the midterm elections. However, despite the president’s obvious commitment to fulfill his crusade promise, activists have received the proposal coldly.

For weeks, the White House has indicated that Biden is about to act on canceling student loans and has begun proposing the outlines of a plan that could cancel up to $10,000 for eligible borrowers. But while there is hope that this plan would appease critics, it does not appear to be having the desired effect.

The administration has been criticized through activists and Democrats, who have demanded action and criticized what they understand as Biden dragging their feet on the issue.

Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), criticized Biden’s proposal as inadequate to solve the big student debt problem. forest fire. “

Johnson also emphasized the movement’s inadequacy for black borrowers, who he said carry a heavier student debt burden. 12% of white borrowers.

“A $10,000 cancellation would be a slap in the face,” Johnson said in a statement. “President Biden, it’s not about whether you can do it, it’s about whether or not you have the will to do it. “

Angus Johnston, a historian of student activism at the City University of New York, also criticized Biden’s debt cancellation plans, that is, the resource test that he says could exclude many of the poorest borrowers from forgiveness.

“The ridiculous thing about Biden’s resource test plan is that it creates an entirely new bureaucratic nightmare with virtually no benefit. The limit is set so high that only a small number of borrowers would be excluded,” Johnston wrote on Twitter.

So you put up a lot of obstacles for the deficient to get help, you slow down and obstruct the process, you spend a lot of government money to manage it, and for what?Putting a line in a discourse on fiscal prudence is a lie that does not replace any vote.

The Debt Collective, an activist organization that lobbies for the cancellation of student loans, called the plan “inadequate” because of its scale and inclusion of proven means. He also warned that millions of Americans would be excluded from the program in its current form.

If you’re lucky. Millions of other people would NEVER get the promised cancellation if that’s the plan they spend https://t. co/i5yNAUxU4E

The White House has yet to release a final edition of its student loan proposal, however, some experts say $10,000 would be useful in easing the burden of debt repayment after nearly two years of deferral due to the pandemic.

“Student loan debt has been a huge burden for years,” Rebecca Safier, student loan expert in student loan control, Student Loan Hero, told CNBC in January 2021. useful for student borrowers. “

Despite his promise to act on student loans as a candidate, Biden has been hesitant to move forward. In response to his own party’s arguments that he could unilaterally eliminate student debt through executive action, Biden expressed doubts about his ability to do so and called on Congress to act.

At the same time, Biden has been recalcitrant about broader debt forgiveness because he believes it would gain disproportionate advantages for other people or high-income academics who have attended elite universities.

“The concept that you pass it on to Penn and pay a total of $70,000 a year and the public pays for it, I disagree,” the president said in an interview with the New York Times.

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