The Department of Education announced the forgiveness of over $10 billion in student loans for public workers. The forgiveness will cover 175,000 borrowers and will be provided through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The DOE announcement is just a prelude to the main announcement, regarding Biden’s decision regarding what to do about student debt generally. The going expectation is that Biden will cancel $10,000 of student loans for borrowers making under $125,000 per year. Although nothing is certain yet.
Whatever Biden decides, it will be controversial; the decision has been contested for months, with conservatives arguing loan forgiveness will exacerbate inflation and progressives advocating for full-on cancellation. Consistently echoing the progressive perspective, calling for full cancellation, has been NY Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
AOC’s official position on student loans – and education generally – are laid out on her website.
“Rep. AOC believes that everyone has the right to an affordable, quality education – starting at pre-K and extending through post-secondary education,” AOC’s website reads. “That is why she has proudly advocated for full federal funding towards educational programs, such as Head-Start and TRIO, which ensure all students have access to affordable pre-k and receive the support they need to apply to and attend college, respectively. She is also a proud sponsor of the Student Debt Cancellation Act, which would forgive outstanding federal and private student loans of all previous and current students in our education system.”
While AOC doesn’t always do what she says she will do, her messaging on student loans has been consistent, if occasionally gimmicky.
In September 2019, during AOC’s first year in office, she made a student loan payment in the middle of a Congressional hearing about student debt. “I literally made a student loan payment while I was sitting here at this chair,” AOC said, “I looked at my balance, and it is $20,237.16. I just made a payment that took me down to $19,000, so I feel really accomplished right now.”
AOC has been critical of President Joe Biden for his reluctance to wipe out significant portions of student debt. In early 2021, not long after Biden had taken office, the president said “I do think in this moment of economic pain and strain that we should be eliminating interest on the debts that are accumulated. I’m prepared to write off the $10,000 debt, but not $50,000. I don’t think I have the authority to do it by the sign of a pen.”
“The president said that he didn’t support the idea of forgiving debts for students who attended expensive private schools including “Harvard and Yale and Penn,” but would rather spend money on providing early childhood education and ensuring that community colleges are tuition-free,” John Dorman reported for Business Insider.
AOC responded to Biden’s statement on Twitter. “Who cares what school someone went to? Entire generations of working class kids were encouraged to go into more debt under the guise of elitism. This is wrong. Nowhere does it say we must trade-off early childhood education for student loan forgiveness. We can have both,” AOC wrote. “The case against student loan forgiveness is looking shakier by the day. We’ve got the Senate Majority Leader on board to forgive $50k. Biden’s holding back, but many of the arguments against it just don’t hold water on close inspection.”
In 2022, AOC argued that people who already paid off their student loans should support loan forgiveness, too. “Maybe student loan forgiveness doesn’t impact you,” AOC wrote in an Instagram story, “that doesn’t make it bad. I am sure there are certainly other things that student loan borrowers’ taxes pay for. We can do good things and reject the scarcity mindset that says doing something good for someone else comes at the cost of something for ourselves. It all comes around. It’s okay. We can support things we won’t directly benefit from.”
Concerning Biden’s anticipated forgiveness plan – $10,000 per borrower – AOC is not impressed. AOC made a good point: $10,000 is enough to anger those opposed to debt forgiveness and those in favor of debt forgiveness.
“$10k relieves most the people who owe the least. What relief is there for the most desperate? For them, interest will undo that 10k fast. We can do better.”
So, if Biden does in fact cancel $10,000 in student loans AOC and her progressive compatriots will be upset. “10,000 in loan relief, as borrowers sit on $1.7 trillion of debt, has not only Ocasio-Cortez disappointed, but also 529 advocacy groups,” Business Insider reported.
“Cancellation will boost household wealth, increase small business formation, and provide much-needed economic relief during this historic period of inflation,” the 529 advocacy groups – which included the ACLU and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) wrote. NAACP President Derrick Johnson criticized $10k in loan forgiveness, calling the move equivalent to “pouring a bucket of ice water on a forest fire.”
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, he joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. He lives in Oregon and listens to Dokken. Follow him on Twitter @harrison_kass.
