Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivers remarks during a protest in support of student debt cancellation as the Supreme Court begins oral arguments outside of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday February 28, 2023.
Sarah Silbiger for The Washington Post via Getty Images
126 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to Biden expressing support for his student-debt relief plan.
It comes after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the cases blocking the relief.
GOP lawmakers have continued to challenge the legality of his plan.
Over 100 Democratic lawmakers want to make sure President Joe Biden knows they’re on his side when it comes to student-debt relief.
On Tuesday, 126 lawmakers, led in part by Sens. Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar, sent a letter to Biden affirming their support for his plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year.
After Biden announced the plan at the end of August, two conservative-backed lawsuits paused the implementation of the relief, and the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in both of the cases last week. His administration has continued to express confidence that the loan forgiveness is legal, and the group of Democratic lawmakers reiterated that they believe the “debt relief plan falls squarely within your administrative authority, we expect the legal challenges to the plan will fail, and 40 million Americans will be able to have their debts reduced or eliminated as they return to repayment.”
“Through your action, approximately 20 million borrowers will have no remaining balance, and nearly 90 percent of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year,” they wrote. “In the less than 4 weeks that the application for debt relief was available and before the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) was required to stop accepting applications as a result of lawsuits from opponents of the program, 26 million people applied to the Department to be deemed eligible for relief.”
They also cited recent data from the Education Department that reflected how the relief will benefit the lowest-income earners, along with benefitting communities of color.
Since Biden’s debt relief plan was announced, many Republican lawmakers attacked that relief as unfair, costly, and an overreach of executive authority.
“How will canceling #studentloans for wealthy elites help working class Americans (many of whom never event went …read more
Source:: Business Insider