President Joe Biden has said he's "taking a hard look" at canceling hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt—a decision his advisers believe would be "a complete disaster" for the Democratic Party in the midterms.
"There are a lot of people very close to the president who privately understand that this is a complete disaster for them," the Washington Post's James Hohmann said on the Bulwark Podcast. The president's aides have attributed the political misjudgment to influence from leftwing Democrats including Sen. Raphael Warnock (Ga.) and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Both are seeking high turnout from the party's base in the Peach State, where they say an electoral block of former graduates from HBCUs could tip the scales.
"They just don’t get it because they haven’t spent time in the WOW counties or in Apple Valley, Minnesota," Hohmann said, referring to toss-up districts on the outskirts of Milwaukee, Wis., and Minneapolis. "The president is being pulled really hard by these woke leftists who … believe it’s all about the base."
Biden canceled $5.8 billion in student loan debt on Wednesday for former students of Corinthian Colleges, a bankrupted for-profit chain of postsecondary-degree schools. Last week, the White House also floated loan forgiveness of $10,000 per student borrower. The debt forgiveness would add $245 billion to federal government debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
The top 40 percent of wage earners hold the majority of student debt. Of student-debt holders between the ages of 25 and 40, the top 40 percent bears half of the total debt, meaning the richest young adults carry the most.
The liberal push for student debt cancellation comes as the United States faces 40-year high inflation and record-breaking gas prices, which have doubled since Biden took office in January 2021.