Joe Biden Faces Mounting Pressure To Cancel $10,000 in Student Loan Debt; Sen. Elizabeth Warren Urges Release of Nearly Year-Old Memo

President Joe Biden hasn't seen a letter in eight months that clarifies whether he has the legal authority to cancel student loans in a wide sense.

Hundreds of Democratic legislators are fed up with waiting for the findings. Democrats including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, along with Congresswomen Pramila Jayapal, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Katie Porter, demanded on Wednesday that Biden release the memo outlining his legal authority to cancel federal student debt broadly, as well as "immediately" canceling up to $50,000 in debt per borrower.

Lawmakers ask Biden to cancel $50K in student loan debts

Biden had ordered Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to write a document on the president's legal power to cancel $50,000 in student debt per individual, according to White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

Although the memo has been around since April 5, according to redacted papers obtained by the Debt Collective, the nation's first debtors' union, it hasn't been made public by the White House. Democrats were demanding for the memo to be released even before those papers were exposed to provide relief to 43 million federal student loan holders. Rep. Omar of Minnesota gave the Education Department two weeks to provide it in October, but the time passed without a response.

Since assuming office in 2021, the Joe Biden administration has been able to cancel a total of $15 billion in student loan debt, as per Complex. More than 675,000 borrowers have benefited from his student debt forgiveness program, according to a news statement from the Department of Education.

According to the report, President Biden has decided to extend the deadline for paying off student loan debt until May of this year. With the demand from legislators to wipe off student debts, a total of 80 members of the House and Senate wrote to President appealing for a memo affirming his power to do so.

Biden hasn't had the answer yet

President Biden, together with Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, wants to forgive each student loan recipient $50,000, a sum that would cost $1 trillion. An extra 36 million students will be able to get their debts forgiven if the measure is implemented.

There are still many folks out there who are feeling the wrath of the expense of paying their school despite the announcement of the student loan relief. Even though President Biden has eliminated more student loan debt than any other president, according to the Education Data Initiative, over 43 million Americans still owe a total of $1.75 trillion in student loan debt, or almost $40,000 per student loan recipient, according to Business Insider.

During the pandemic, Biden paused student loan repayments, but he has yet to fulfill his campaign vow to erase up to $10,000 in each of student debt. A bill presented by Congresswoman Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) and other lawmakers would provide more assistance to borrowers who have defaulted or missed payments on their student loans, making it easier for them to clear their credit history. She is also a proponent of making tuition more accessible by expanding Pell Grants.

More than 36 million people in the United States currently hold federal student loans. About a third of borrowers are in default or delinquent, according to the Department of Education, as per WGN9.