With an eye set on young voters this election year, President Joe Biden is clicking away on his student debt relief strategy, wiping out an additional $7.4 billion for 277,000 borrowers on Friday.
After the Supreme Court gave a big thumbs down to last year’s plan to cancel $400 billion in student debt, the White House has been handling the issue in chunks in an effort to make good on Biden’s promise despite pushback from Republicans. And so far, a total of $153 billion has been canceled, with plans for further rounds underway.
According to The New York Times, Biden outlined his efforts on Monday, breaking down a new attempt to wipe out student loan debt on a larger scale that will reduce the amount that 25 million borrowers still owe on their undergraduate and graduate loans. But it has to break through legal challenges first, as well as opposition from people like Representative John Moolenaar, Republican of Michigan, who spoke against such efforts during a hearing on Wednesday.
“You’re incentivizing people to not pay back student loans and at the same time penalizing and forcing people who did to subsidize those who didn’t,” says Moolenaar.
“From day one of my Administration, I promised to fight to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden said in a statement against views matching the above. “I will never stop working to cancel student debt — no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”