After months of talk about student loan forgiveness floating around the West Wing, millions of current and former college attendees had their nervous anticipation come to a close on Aug. 24 when U.S. President Joe Biden announced details of the debt cancellation. The plan allows for up to $20,000 of student loan debt to be forgiven for any student who received a federal Pell Grant at any time in their academic career, and $10,000 for all other students with federally financed loans.
The right wing has painted Biden as a new Vladimir Lenin, while a more apt comparison is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Biden chose the strategy of canceling debt for one of his party’s most reliable voting blocs — the college-educated voter. In 2020, Biden won nearly 5 percent more of their vote than Trump (51.3 percent vs. 46.8 percent, according to NBC). Similarly to FDR’s New Deal, Biden’s policy wasn’t intended to challenge the system that caused Americans to amass nearly $1.75 trillion in student debt but to help sustain it. Capitalism is decreasing in popularity among younger generations, giving the Democratic Party an opportunity to both save capitalism and also relieve the burdens of the poor and young people. Although the left does not have the same institutional power to challenge the Democrats as it did during the Roosevelt administration, Democrats still have to fear drops in turnout and significant numbers of minorities fleeing the party.
Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan will help to relieve millions of people of an unnecessary burden. The cancellation of only student debt, however, is piecemeal. By learning from the student debt issue, the left can mount public pressure to get other forms of public debt forgiven, such as medical or utility debt. In 2019, approximately 17 percent of American households owed medical debt, making the cancellation of medical debt a tangible issue for voters. In Los Angeles, between 25 to 30 percent of families are struggling to pay their utility bills or are in debt, with impoverished neighborhoods hit hardest. As the blue-collar vote continues to favor Republicans, the Democratic Party can win some of it back through delivering on material issues. The best way to get people to vote for you is to give them money — it just so happens that doing so is also the best way to work toward eliminating poverty. In helping the Democrats with the former, the left can make important steps in accomplishing the latter.
Victims of medical debt are more likely to be Black or Latino, two groups that are historically reliable Democratic voting blocs. Black adults people are 2.6 times as likely as white adults to have medical debt in the U.S. Over the last couple election cycles, Latinos have increasingly been leaving the Democratic Party, giving Democrats an added reason to cancel debt that disproportionately affects the Latino community.
As polling has repeatedly shown, many Americans believe health care ought to be a right. There is no path for the Democratic party to bulldoze universal health care into law, nor is there any political will among the Democratic establishment to do so. As a short-term alternative, we can cancel medical debt without congressional approval, making it a realistic path to relieve millions of Americans from the demonic health care industry. Here’s how — the president could immediately cancel all federal medical debt with the stroke of a pen.
The remaining non-federal medical debt is held by private companies, making it slightly trickier to cancel, but still doable. The federal government would need to purchase medical debt from private credit agencies and cancel it. Bernie Sanders proposed a similar plan during his 2020 presidential campaign.
As a socialist, it is hard to root for the Democrats as they take credit for the pressure instilled by the left. Putting aside long-term opposition to the existence of the Democratic Party, it is possible for the left to deliver material results for families while still strategically organizing for the end goal of nationalization.
Nathan Sommer is a sophomore majoring in history.