Joe Biden is once again attempting to cancel student loan debt to the tune of millions, in yet another attempt that is widely seen as political pandering ahead of the November election.
According to Politico, Biden’s planned announcement on Monday will seek to cancel the current student loan debt for over 30 million Americans, after a previous attempt was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Biden himself will travel to Wisconsin to promote his plan, while other administration surrogates will travel to other swing states in support of the effort.
In 2022, Biden attempted to reduce student loan debt by $10,000 to $20,000 for each borrower, targeting 40 million Americans, before the Supreme Court struck down his plan. The new plan, while smaller in scale, attempts to do so in a way that might not be as easily overturned by the courts.
“President Biden will use every tool available to cancel student loan debt for as many borrowers as possible, no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stand in his way,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Sunday.
The plan aims to forgive unpaid interest for at least 25 million Americans who currently owe more on their loans than the amounts they originally borrowed. At the same time, the plan will allegedly provide relief to over 2 million borrowers who have held their debts for decades, and another 2 million who failed to enroll in federal programs for which they would have qualified.
With the November election just 7 months away, the Biden Administration is under pressure to get the plan implemented in time for voters to start casting their ballots. The new regulations will be proposed for public comment in “coming months,” while the plan will be enacted sometime “this fall,” which would most likely be shortly before the election.
Biden’s efforts are seen as especially attempting to buy off the votes of millions of young Americans, one of the voting blocs that is most loyally Democratic. However, younger voters have soured on Biden in recent years, due partly to his failure to address the student loan debt issue; other reasons include Biden’s handling of the war in Israel, as many young Americans are anti-Israel and have been regularly protesting and rioting across the country in opposition to Israel and Biden’s support for Israel.