Biden can\u2019t evade this problem forever. The president promised during his campaign to relieve people of $10,000 in student loan debt. So far, he hasn\u2019t.<\/b>
\nAmericans with student loan debt get another temporary reprieve. The Biden White House announced on Wednesday that the president would extend a moratorium on loan repayment until May 1. The moratorium was originally scheduled to expire next month, so May 1 is a clear improvement on the status quo. Yet Wednesday\u2019s extension raises uncomfortable questions for the administration. Americans collectively owed $1.6 trillion in student debt as of 2020. On the campaign trail, Biden had pledged to forgive $10,000 in student loan debt. That\u2019s far less than plans put forward by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren during the Democratic primary and far less, again, than a bill sponsored by Warren and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, which would cancel $50,000 in student loan debt if enacted. Biden has been clear on one point: He doesn\u2019t believe he has the executive authority to cancel so much debt, an argument that progressives strenuously contest. His initial campaign pledge endures, however, and now it haunts him. By extending the moratorium until May 1, Biden merely delays questions he can\u2019t evade forever. Will he carry out the modest debt relief he promised? Or will he demur, swayed by arguments against cancellation? According to some, student debt is an elite problem, and Biden has shown himself susceptible to that rhetoric. The government, he said last February, should not forgive the debt of those who went to \u201cHarvard and Yale and Penn.\u201d There are obvious cracks in the president\u2019s commitment to student debt cancellation, pandemic notwithstanding, and that should concern debtors and their advocates. Student loan debt is not a problem for elites. It principally troubles the very families Biden says he most wants to help. As the cost of college increases, financial burdens fall heaviest on middle-class and poor families whose chances of social mobility rest, often, on a college education. The debt crisis penalizes middle- and low-income students whether they attend a commuter school or Harvard. They pay for dreaming of anything better at all. While the president bides his time, debtors inhabit a peculiar American purgatory. The moratorium is a buffer between pain and the debtor, but it\u2019s not salvation, either. Biden holds that possibility in his hands. Public pressure preserved the moratorium for now and perhaps will do so again. Even if the pandemic has eased by May 1, debtors have one other bit of leverage: If repayment goes into effect ahead of midterm elections, the administration will be guilty of a catastrophic political error. Whether Biden realizes this or not is unclear. It is clear, though, that debtors deserve more from the president. Biden\u2019s current approach to student loan debt is simply unsustainable over the near term. He should listen to Sanders, Warren, and Schumer, but even if he won\u2019t, the bit of relief he once promised is preferable to confusion and delays. Quit dithering and cancel the debt.<\/p>\n