AOC on Student Loan Debt Cancelation: We Have to Push Biden ‘To at the Bare Minimum, a Floor of $50,000’
Progressive congresswoman wants to see high levels of cancellation so doctors and lawyers would benefit
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the latest congressional Democrat to advocate for publicly pushing President Biden to take executive action to cancel at least $50,000 of student loan debt per indebted American.
Biden, himself, has resisted taking any executive action to cancel that much student loan debt.
However, Ocasio-Cortez joins fellow New York Democrat, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has likewise been publicly asking Biden to take that step for at least a number of weeks now. So has Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass).
Biden has asked the Department of Education to review the potential for his executive action to cancel student debt — and to release publicly a brief which would acknowledge that he has that authority.
“He can do it without Congress, with a stroke of his pen. Then once they release that brief, then it’s on us to then triple down on our organizing and to get him to do it. He has expressed, you know, some talk around a $10,000 level,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “I don’t think that that’s enough. We need to push him. I believe in full student loan debt cancellation. But we have to push him to at the bare minimum a floor of $50,000 that Senator Warren and Senator Schumer have also advanced.
“Fifty-thousand dollars, I believe, would cancel about 80 percent of the student loan debt in the country," she added. "I believe in higher thresholds because, frankly, I believe that our doctors and our lawyers and folks that have been in legal professions, academia, professors, etc., I believe that they should also be eligible to have their student loan debt cancelled. And so I think that that’s something that’s extraordinarily important.”