The Executive Order Biden Is Not Issuing
Biden is slated to issue a lot of executive orders in the next few days. But there is no indication that he will unilaterally forgive the student loan debt of millions of Americans, as more liberal Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren and even some more centrist figures like Sen. Chuck Schumer spent much of the transition period lobbying for.
Warren, Schumer and others have argued that a president can forgive student debt and had urged Biden to forgive up to at least $50,000 of Americans’ debt using his executive power. But Biden had questioned if he had the legal authority to take this step.
It’s telling that Biden opted not to simply enact this policy and then try to defend it in the courts. It is likely that Biden is wary of using his executive power in ways that moderate Democrats and Republicans will view as unusual and unprecedented. It also perhaps underscores that he and some of his advisers don’t think forgiving student loan debt in such a broad way is an ideal policy (as opposed to more targeted aid or aid for people who did not attend college.)
But Biden’s resistance to this policy is telling, as it’s part of a dynamic that we are likely to see a lot of in his administration: Biden disappointing his party’s left wing. It’s likely, for instance, a President Sanders or Warren would have tried to implement a massive debt forgiveness via executive order had they won the Democratic primary and been elected president. But, of course, neither of them did.