Student debt crisis caused by ‘deliberate political decisions’: Warren

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• Senator Elizabeth Warren said the student debt crisis was caused by a “deliberate political decision”.
• She referenced tax cuts that Democrats have criticized in the past for favoring the wealthy.
• Biden is close to making a decision on a relief that will likely be announced in July or August.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren thinks politics is to blame for the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis.

“Can we all just take a deep breath and acknowledge that $1.7 trillion in student debt didn’t fall from the sky?” Warren said during a student debt roundtable on Wednesday at the offices of the AFL-CIO labor federation group. “It didn’t just happen as an act of gravity, it didn’t just happen because of age, it happened because of deliberate political decisions to invest in lowering taxes to the wealthiest Americans and paying for it by cutting back on our children’s education.”

Warren was referring to broad tax policy that Democratic lawmakers have criticized in the past for favoring corporations and wealthier Americans. She stressed that, like the union leaders present at the roundtable, effective policies are those that help the country’s workers.

“Mr. President, labor cares about student loan debt,” Warren added.

Even before Warren became a lawmaker, she investigated the student loan industry as she helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and as a senator she worked with the agency to uncover corporate abuses. student loans that caused borrowers to take on more debt than they could afford to repay. She was also a key lawmaker pushing President Joe Biden to write off $50,000 in student debt per borrower — something she proposed during his presidential campaign but has yet to come to fruition.

Currently, Biden is reportedly considering $10,000 in relief for borrowers earning less than $150,000 a year, and the final decision will likely be announced in July or August, closer to the expiration of the student loan payment pause after the August 31. Fellow Democrats believe that $50,000 is the amount that will provide the most relief to the most people while helping close the racial wealth gap.

While Democrats are calling on Biden to prioritize this issue and use his executive authority to reduce the student debt burden, Republican lawmakers have criticized the idea, saying the president shouldn’t provide student debt relief. all federal borrowers. House Education Committee Republican lead Virginia Foxx recently said Biden is “operating as if he can issue any executive order he wants on student loan forgiveness, even if it means exercising an authority he does not have”.

Biden has not publicly confirmed the amount of the relief, but he told reporters over the weekend that he was nearing a final decision and that a further extension of the payment break is still pending. on the table. Representative Ayanna Pressley, who joined Warren at Wednesday’s roundtable, hopes the relief will be significant and ease the debt burden for as many Americans as possible.

“There’s no shame in fighting,” Pressley said. “The shame is that we are not doing everything in our power to ease the burden of this struggle.”