Actually, Biden Can — And Should — Cancel $50,000 In Student Debt
By Prerna Jagadeesh
At a CNN town hall this week, President Biden was asked whether he would cancel $50,000 of student loan debt via executive action, and he responded by invoking a number of obstacles which he believes are obstructing him from doing so — even though there is ample evidence he has this power. So why the hesitation? It’s clear the underlying issue is that Biden fears cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt will become a political liability. However, new polling by Data for Progress suggests that cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt per person is not a liability but rather an opportunity, given how popular student loan debt cancellation is with the American people. Cancelling this debt will produce a big political win without Republican interference, strengthen Biden’s economic policy agenda, and make a huge dent in the racial wealth gap, while also creating rather than spending political capital for Biden because the American people want him to take this action.
In a recent survey experiment we randomly assigned respondents to be asked about $10,000 or $50,000 of student debt cancelation. As the chart shows, support was slightly higher in the $50,000 condition, though within the margin of error. There is no evidence that going smaller will help Biden.
In national polling from Data for Progress, 54% of all voters want Biden to cancel $50,000 of student debt as opposed to 52% who want him to cancel $10,000 of student debt, a difference that falls within the margin of error. Additionally, Republican voters are no more likely to support cancelling a smaller amount of debt.
Even though 36% of Republican voters support student loan debt cancellation, 0% of Republican legislators in Congress agree with their voters on this issue (so much for Republican calls for bipartisanship). That makes it all the more urgent for President Biden to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt via executive order instead of punting it to Congress. Since the President doesn’t have to negotiate with Republicans to sign an executive order, he doesn’t have to worry about not going big enough with it — especially fortunate since the more student loan debt he cancels via executive order, the greater the stimulative effects of student loan debt cancellation on the economy. By cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt through executive order, President Biden can enact broad, transformative economic policy without it suffering death by a thousand Republican cuts in the legislative process.
In addition to support among Independents, student loan debt cancellation of $50,000 per person is wildly popular with the core constituency of Biden’s base: Black Americans.
Data for Progress has found that an overwhelming majority of Black people want Biden to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt. Crucially, that number is 6 percentage points higher than the percentage of Black people who support cancelling $10,000 of student loan debt. If Biden truly wants to honor the wishes of the people who put him in office, he must listen to their demands — and they’re being loud and clear about wanting him to cancel as much student debt as possible. This is especially the case because in every instance where a white person is affected by student loan debt, a Black person is affected multiple times harder. Black students take out an average of $7,400 more in loans than white students, owe three times as much debt as white students just 4 years after graduation, default on loans at much higher rates, and possess significantly less capital in their 30s and onwards because of student loan debt and its externalities than their white peers do. Since many more Black households carry student loan debt than white households, cancelling $50,000 of it per person would grow the wealth share of Black people in America substantially.
In his CNN town hall, President Biden suggested that cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt would come across as a slap in the face to people who didn’t obtain college degrees. However, our data shows that those people don’t see it that way.
Fifty-seven percent of people who didn’t receive a college degree support cancelling $50,000 of student loan debt per person, as opposed to 34% of people without a college degree who oppose it. If a majority of people without college degrees want to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per person — possibly because many people in this category did go to college but didn’t graduate, causing them to have loans but no degree — then there is no reason for the Biden administration to fear that cancelling student loan debt will offend people who don’t have college degrees.
Further, cancelling a full $50,000 of student loan debt per person via executive order won’t just be a one-time handout to college educated people — it will help people who did not receive a college degree too. Cancelling student debt will improve the economy overall and strengthen every component of President Biden’s pandemic recovery package. Every month, the average American student debt holder makes loan payments of $200 to $300. Cancelling that debt would be akin to giving those people an extra stimulus check every month. That’s not to mention that people drowning in student loan debt are considerably less likely to start a small business or buy a home — cancelling $50,000 of their debt will enable these people to meaningfully participate in the American economy for the first time in their lives.
When President Biden was a student at the University of Delaware in the early 1960s, the engine of the American Dream was powered by the promise of an affordable college education. President Biden and his classmates paid around $1,286 in 2019 dollars for a full year of college, and were able to use their largely debt-free educations to establish themselves firmly in the security and prosperity of the middle class. But in the ensuing decades, we’ve made the policy choice to finance college educations with student loans instead of summer jobs. Today’s college students on average pay a whopping $28,123 per year — $47,541 at private universities — and take on immense amounts of student loan debt in order to gain the college education our society exhorts, crippling their ability to participate in the American economy and live fully realized adult lives afterwards. By issuing an executive order to cancel $50,000 of student loan debt per person, President Biden will instantly lift millions of Americans into the secure financial status that formed the bedrock of his personal success, and that of the middle class of yesteryear. Now is the time for him to do it.
Prerna Jagadeesh is an intern at Data for Progress.
From January 6 to January 11, 2021, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1219 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±2.8 percentage points.