President Joe Biden has canceled student debt for some 153,000 borrowers — and he wants to make sure all of them know who boosted their bank account.
“I promise you I’m never going to stop fighting for hardworking American families,” Biden said Wednesday at a campaign reception in Los Angeles. “So if you qualify, you’ll be hearing from me shortly.”
Biden is putting his name and signature on emails to borrowers who will have their loans written off, which Politico described as “sending emails to make sure they know whom to thank for it.”
The Biden team is campaigning hard on the topic, under which the president has extended $138 billion in debt relief for nearly 3.9 million borrowers.
Republicans have many problems with the effort, including the fact that unpaid debts fall on taxpayers, that it doesn’t address the root problem of high college costs, and that Biden appears to be defying a Supreme Court ruling that his previous forgiveness scheme was unconstitutional.
Their latest cry is hypocrisy.
“Adding Biden’s name to relief checks wasn’t ‘a necessary step’ when he took office, but it is now (because it’s an election year),” Republican National Committee spokesman Jake Schneider wrote in an email blast. “It’s a bad idea — unless, of course, you need to buy votes.”
The reference was to Biden refusing to list his name on stimulus checks that went out shortly after he took office. Former President Donald Trump controversially put his name on stimulus checks in 2020, but then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the practice would end under Biden.
“This is not about him,” Psaki said. “This is about the American people getting relief.”
But now, Biden is taking credit by name for his economic relief efforts, a temptation many presidents have failed to avoid. Even before Trump, President George W. Bush took heat for spending $42 million to mail out letters telling people a check was coming.
Republicans turned the heat on Biden this week.
“Unfortunately, Biden believes that more government dependence means more votes come Election Day,” House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said. “And as a result, [he] has focused his time and energy on harmful initiatives to bolster his ratings.”
Democratic strategist Brad Bannon agrees there’s hypocrisy afoot, just not the kind Republicans think.
“The acronym for hypocrisy is G-O-P,” he said. “Back in 2018, many of the people who now are complaining about Biden’s student loan actions voted for a massive tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. I don’t remember any of the Republicans complaining about Trump buying votes.”
Republicans will point out that Trump’s tax cuts and Paycheck Protection Program were approved by Congress, whereas Biden’s student loan schemes were not. But Bannon says that underscores the case to have his name on the emails.
“The Republicans did not have any role whatsoever in student loan forgiveness,” he said. “So, it’s appropriate.”
Biden first tried to cancel at least $400 billion in student loans, in amounts up to $20,000 for individual borrowers and $40,000 for married couples, in a sweeping measure that would have affected roughly 40 million people. Since the Supreme Court struck that down, he’s settled for relatively small cancellation rounds affecting nearly 4 million people while promising to keep fighting for more.
Republicans say that nearly everything Biden has done since the Supreme Court decision is illegal, but they would likely need to overcome a presidential veto in Congress, and no major lawsuits have emerged to fight the smaller cancellation rounds.
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Meanwhile, the president is likely to continue promoting his unilateral role in the student debt fight, both on the policy and political fronts.
“Thousands of people per month are eligible, about 25,000 a month,” Biden said Wednesday. “They’ll be getting a letter from me letting them know they’re qualified, and when they get that letter, your debt is going to be forgiven.”
