It was the beginning of May, and Representative Pramila Jayapal had a positive outlook.
The chairperson of the Congressional Progressive Caucus had a strong gut feeling that a significant announcement was going to come out of the White House very soon.
The Democratic representative from Washington pondered aloud to CNN at the time, “Something is coming, and something is coming soon.” “I have a pretty good feeling that something will happen within the next several weeks,” the speaker said.
Jayapal wasn’t the only one who was referring to a decision that had been a long time coming about the cancellation of student loan debt made by President Joe Biden. The previous week, the President had stated that he was “taking a hard look” at debt forgiveness, and he had hinted that an answer might be forthcoming in several weeks.
With graduation season just around the corner, the time seemed especially appropriate: Some people in Washington speculated about the fourth weekend of the month when Biden was scheduled to give two consecutive commencement speeches at the University of Delaware and the United States Naval Academy. Officials in the White House toyed with the idea of revealing their strategy at that time.
However, graduation time came and went without any announcements being made.
In point of fact, he would wait until the next school year had already begun in certain parts of the country before announcing from the White House his decision to cancel student loan debt of up to $20,000 for tens of millions of people in the United States.
The subject of whether or not to utilise presidential powers to cancel student loan debt appeared to be exceptionally lengthy and drawn-out, even for a president who is famously incapable of making decisions.
In interviews with nearly a dozen people who were familiar with the internal deliberations, it was revealed that a myriad of factors contributed to the delay.
However, the most significant of these factors was Vice President Biden’s worries about inflation and his insistence that the forgiveness plan would not be seen as a handout to the wealthy.
When asked to characterise the procedure, one Democrat who had regularly discussed the matter with the White House reacted with a one-word text message: “Tortured.”
A multitude of national crises and international events that took up Biden’s energy and time as he settled into his first term in office complicated the situation.
These ranged from the escalating war in Ukraine to the rising prices of gas and consumer goods that were fueling economic pessimism. Both of these factors contributed to the general sense of economic pessimism.
One Democrat in Washington stated that administration officials had multiple times throughout the year the mindset that “it was so much easier to just continue to wait.” They continued directly by saying, “There was sh-t going on.”
However, only a portion of the delay could be attributed to things happening in the outside world.
Biden agonised over legal concerns, moral hang-ups, and persistent questions about the plan’s fairness and its potential to exacerbate inflation. This was the most significant political liability for his party heading into the fall election season.
As he discussed each of these issues with advisors and lawmakers, the President made it abundantly clear that he was looking to feel convinced that — on both the policy and political fronts — there was undeniable merit to taking action, according to sources.
The President made it clear that he was looking to feel convinced that — on both the policy and political fronts — there was undeniable merit to taking action.
The choice that Obama ultimately revealed this week, which was to forgive as much as $10,000 in debt for persons earning less than $125,000 and as much as $20,000 for those who had also gotten Pell grants, was both more than some Democrats had anticipated and less than many had called for.
Borrowers who were uncertain as to whether or not they would need to start making payments on their student loans again the next week would now have more assurance as a result of Biden’s announcement of the final extension of the moratorium.
Within the White House, there was a consensus that the decision would not likely satisfy all of the Democrats who have been vocally lobbying for debt relief.
This was a consensus that was shared by a large majority of staff members. Some Democrats who are in for tough reelection fights in November withdrew their support for the measure.
One of the Democrats who took part in the conversation stated, “This was never going to be a win-win situation for us.” “By dragging out the process in the manner that Biden has, he has created a vacuum that anyone may step into and fill.”
However, after several months of internal discussions and postponed decisions, Biden and his closest aides came to the conclusion that they could no longer put off addressing one of the lingering unresolved issues that were hanging over his presidency.
In the first few weeks of the administration, it became abundantly evident that Biden would not have an easy path to choose regarding the problem.
Officials in the White House came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to implement a time-tested tactic in Washington, which was to remove the matter from the President’s already-packed agenda during the first few months of his term.
They asked for a comprehensive legal assessment to be conducted by the Departments of Justice and Education, but other than that, they didn’t say much further.
One administration official, who was supportive of the concept of eliminating debt, noted that some people viewed it as a review that might never actually come to a conclusion.
Regarding the attitude taken by the White House toward the matter, one official expressed their scepticism by saying, “Bury it.” “In the end, they were in the wrong. However, there were unquestionably times when it appeared to be the case.
Those who had discussed the matter with Biden had their own individual grounds for doubting its veracity. Biden, in contrast to many members of his party, simply had not bought into the notion that the White House has the authority.
Even if it did, according to two people who are familiar with the situation, Biden regularly brought up concerns about fairness in discussions about the issue. He was concerned that it would primarily benefit borrowers who had the means to pay their debt or those who predominantly attended top academic institutions. And what about those people who made the decision not to attend college at any point?
An additional extension of the freeze that had been placed on federal student loan repayments during the pandemic was announced by Vice President Joe Biden in April.
This was something that officials had indicated was unlikely to happen after the first extension was granted. Even at that time, the authorities did not have a good sense of where Biden would land.
At that point, officials stated that the administration’s reviews had been carried out and were ultimately concluded.
The policy and legal teams working for Biden were prepared with various possibilities, even though they did not share a uniform opinion regarding the idea’s merits.
Three weeks after Vice President Biden’s decision to extend the repayment freeze, the contentious policy and legal debate over forgiving student loans were laid bare in the Oval Office. The focus was on the politics of the situation.
However, there is a steady stream of internal figures that are factored into strategy and decision-making inside the West Wing, even though Biden’s aides have taken the position of discounting public polls as irrelevant.
Some independent research also pokes holes in the White House’s narrative, none more so than a survey of young voters that was carried out by a member of Biden’s 2020 campaign staff.
According to the findings of a survey that was carried out by the Harvard Institute of Politics, only 41% of young Americans were satisfied with Biden’s work performance. It was a decline of 18 points from the previous year’s total.
During a meeting at the White House with students from Harvard and their academic advisor, Vice President Biden discussed the specifics of the poll in depth with the individuals who were responsible for its creation.
A few weeks later, John Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP), who became a trusted voice inside of Biden’s inner circle, would argue for student loan action with a clear and concise message.
“Beyond the essential economic bottom line, this action will begin to materially rebuild the fractured relationship between the leader of the Democrats and a voting bloc that was integral to his party’s most recent successes,” Della Volpe wrote in an essay for the New York Times.
“This action will begin to materially rebuild the fractured relationship between the leader of the Democrats and a voting bloc that was integral to his party’s most recent successes.”
The politics that were presented in the Harvard poll and others during the spring were not the sole factor that led to the decision, according to officials, but they do acknowledge that it did resonate with some of Biden’s senior advisers, including Ron Klain, who is currently serving as the chief of staff for the White House.
It struck a chord with Vice President Biden as well. It wasn’t just about the policy itself when the choice to move forward was made; it was also about delivering on a campaign promise and delivering action, two aspects that were emphasised as crucial in the Harvard polling.
However, converting Biden’s openness to move forward into actual policy was by no means a straightforward process.
Even while this delay has put millions of borrowers in a position of worrying uncertainty, Vice President Biden took his time to decide on a final decision because he was subjected to intense lobbying from fellow Democrats, some of which occurred in the hours before he made his final statement.
Late in March, when members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus stopped by the White House to see Vice President Biden, the President took the opportunity to mull over one of his primary preoccupations, which was ensuring that wealthy families would not benefit from the cancellation of their student loans.
Some of the legislators in the room pointed out that putting an income cap in place probably wouldn’t make much of a difference, given that high earners are much less likely to take out loans to attend school, to begin with. This was one of the main points that they made.
He and top White House officials were also on the receiving end of appeals from prominent senators, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who had competed against Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary and who had famously made the cancellation of student loan debt a major pillar of her campaign.
As soon as the general election got underway, the Democrat from Massachusetts started lobbying Vice President Biden and his top aides on the issue of student loan debt.
The Massachusetts Democrat liked to cite a statistic about the amount of debt held by graduates from the University of Delaware.
According to sources that are involved with those conversations, the senator had dozens of phone contacts with senior staff members at the White House regarding the breadth of the prospective debt forgiveness, as well as multiple direct meetings with Vice President Biden.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was also one of the few senior Democrats that pressed Vice President Joe Biden to eliminate student debt for a significant portion of his term in office.
Even after a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, which left several people dead, the campaign continued. Vice President Joe Biden visited Buffalo in May to meet with the families of those killed in the shooting.
According to the source, Senator Chuck Schumer explicitly argued to Vice President Joe Biden on May 17 aboard Air Force One that erasing student loan debt was the “correct thing to do economically and morally.” This argument was made when the two were travelling back to Washington.
Warren, too, made the most of recent opportunities to interact directly with the President while on board Air Force One. In July, as the senator was accompanying Vice President Biden on his trip to Somerset, Massachusetts for his important speech on climate change, the senator continued to stress the critical nature of the matter.
In recent months, Warren had begun pushing the White House to consider additional student loan cancellation on top of the baseline forgiveness that the administration was leaning toward for people making less than $125,000 per year, with the hope of raising the total amount of forgiveness that people with the lowest incomes in the United States would be eligible for.
This was done in the hope of raising the total amount of forgiveness that people with the lowest incomes in the United States would be eligible for.
CNN was told by a source familiar with the discussions that Vice President Kamala Harris made the case regularly for the widespread cancellation of student debt. This included making the case directly to the President himself.
According to the source, “the fact that she was an advocate for debt cancellation was not a well-kept secret.”
The final announcement that was made by the White House mirrored a portion of Senator Harris’ plan for 2019 student debt forgiveness, which included a reduction of $20,000 in relief for Pell grant recipients who started small businesses in disadvantaged communities. This reduction was included in the final announcement that was made by the White House.
Jayapal, who stated that she had been in contact with officials from the White House in the days preceding Biden’s announcement, stated that she had the impression that the final amount — $20,000 in maximum loan forgiveness for Pell grant recipients — was “in flux, to the very end.”
Jayapal, who referred to Biden’s announcement this week as a “major success,” stated that “I think it’s been a journey for the President, let’s put it that way.”
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“There are some things that are easier and some harder things, and I get the impression that maybe this was a little bit harder. Some things are easier than others. However, I believe that he eventually settled down somewhere that he could call home.
