Buried in the text of the debt deal is a provision codifying in law Joe Biden’s plan to end serial student debt pauses as of September, pending a Supreme Court ruling on his partial debt cancellation. If the Court rules against him, the result will be a massive jolt to younger Americans (and not-so-young Americans) saddled with debt, as well as a big macroeconomic contraction to the economy.
Thanks to the debt payment pause, which began in the bipartisan CARES Act of March 2020 and was extended indefinitely by executive order on Biden’s first day in office, some 48 million former students have had a three-year respite from this financial burden, which now totals over $1.7 trillion. By September, all could be paying the full tab.
When Biden announced his plan for debt cancellation in August 2022, the decision was carefully poll-tested. Strategists weighed the benefit to those saddled with debt against the annoyance of those who either never attended college or who had already repaid their debts in full.
In addition, Republicans and corporate Democrats argued that the beneficiaries of debt cancellation, as people who had attended college, were better off on average than taxpayers who would be in effect paying for the debt relief. Biden carefully split the difference by canceling the first $20,000 of debt, plus some other technical adjustments.
I think this mode of calculus is profoundly wrong. Abraham Lincoln and FDR did not poll-test their values and policies—they went on intuition and justice, and they went big.
The last two generations of students—millennials and recent Gen Z grads—have gotten the most profound economic screwing of any generation of young people since the Great Depression. Worse, really, since those who were young and devastated in the 1930s got a chance to thrive in the 1950s. There is no such economic rescue on the horizon for today’s young, barring a drastically different set of policies. And that’s the point.
Biden needs to embrace a broad agenda of generational justice for the young. A young adult today pursuing upward mobility is not only saddled with student debt. Many are unable to buy a house, or afford rent without multiple roommates. The young have difficulty finding a stable payroll job with benefits and career prospects that are more than a gig. The calculus is even worse for African Americans and for those who did not complete college and are still stuck with debt.
My generation—and Biden’s—faced nothing like this. Student debt hadn’t even been invented; college and housing were affordable; and there were plenty of career-track jobs.
We need an expansive Bill of Rights for the Young—debt cancellation, free public college, affordable housing, as well as more reliable jobs. Yes, this will cost plenty; we can pay for it by taxing the filthy rich. This is what Biden should run on and let Republicans oppose the dreams of the young.
Young people are precisely the segment of the electorate who are somewhat skeptical of Biden’s geezer-hood and who need to be motivated to vote, big-time. The youth vote turned out big and broke heavily for Democrats in 2018, allowing a takeback of the House.
We need that in 2024, and more. The old guy needs to be a radical champion of the young.
Go big again, Joe.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect (prospect.org) and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. Like him on facebook.com/RobertKuttner and/or follow him at twitter.com/rkuttner.See the online version.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023
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