President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced his administration will extend the moratorium on federal student loan payments until August 31, easing the fears of millions of borrowers who would have to resume payments on May 1 after two years of pandemic relief.
"I know folks were hit hard by this pandemic," the president said in a Twitter video announcing the extension. "And though we've come a long way in the last year, we're still recovering from the economic crisis it caused. This continued pause will help Americans breathe a little easier as we recover and rebuild from the pandemic."
The past two years have been a boon for the more than 43 million Americans who hold a combined $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the CARES Act instituted a moratorium on federal student loan payments and the accumulation of interest on those loans.
The original moratorium lasted through September 2020, which President Donald Trump extended through the end of December, and again through January 31, 2021.
President Joe Biden came into office and extended the payment pause through September 30, 2021, again through January, and for a third time, after much public pressure earlier this year, with the moratorium set to end on the first of May. Now it has been pushed back yet again.
Progressive lawmakers and student debt groups met the decision with praise but called on the president to cancel wide swathes of student debt through an executive order.
"We recognize that extending the payment pause is important to borrowers struggling to shoulder the harm caused by the pandemic, economic shocks, and inflation," Natalia Abrams, the president and founder of the Student Debt Crisis Center, said in a statement. "However, President Biden's piecemeal, short-term approach is not enough to meet these challenging times."
Supporters of cancellation argue the president's powers under the Higher Education Act of 1965 allow him to forgive student debt without an act of Congress. They say he's already used this authority to pause federal loan payments and the accumulation of interest.
The Departments of Justice and Education last year reviewed whether or not the president has the legal authority to cancel debt via executive order. The results of that review are contained in a heavily redacted memo, released by the Debt Collective in October after a Freedom of Information Act request, which did not offer any clarity to the public.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has not provided a timeline for when the memo's contents would be made public, despite repeated questions over the past several months, saying the president continues to consider his options.
Biden has already canceled $15 billion of federal student debt for certain borrowers without any congressional input. The cancellation applies to borrowers with total and permanent disabilities, some borrowers who applied for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, students defrauded by the ITT Technical Institute, and students who did not complete degrees at institutions that have since shuttered.
Biden's decision and the larger conversation around debt cancellation have prompted backlash from some. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in a tweet called the continued extension of the moratorium "an insult" to borrowers who have paid off their debt.
Many have already noted that the extension only lasts for a little over four more months, at which time the administration is likely to face the same calls to extend the moratorium or cancel some amount of federal student debt outright.
The moratorium is also set to end just two months before the midterm elections, and the political calculation will loom large as the White House decides whether to extend again later this year.
"[T]oday's news should also be a reminder that the student debt crisis continues to loom over the financial futures of families across the country," Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement.
"Come August, people with student debt will have no one to blame but Joe Biden if they still remain trapped in America's broken student loan system because he didn't keep his promise to cancel student debt," he said.
Terrell Jermaine Starr, senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the Black Diplomats podcast joins Cheddar News to discuss Russia's attempt to invade Ukraine.
With an increasing number of teachers and staff calling out sick by the day, the state of Oklahoma is turning to an unusual solution. Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has issued an executive order that permits state employees to work as substitute teachers. Shaily Baranwal, founder and CEO of Elevate K-12, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the stance of the U.S. and its allies should Russia make any forays into Ukraine, a seeming response to President Biden's remarks that should Putin engage in something short of a full invasion, there might be some indecision among allied nations regarding what to do. Ariel Cohen, a senior fellow at the think tank Atlantic Council, joined Cheddar to discuss the difficulty faced by Blinken wrangling unity as tensions run high in the region. "There'll be a smaller incursion, and the president implied, there'll be a weaker response because our European allies have created this horrible situation where they are dependent on Moscow for their gas supply," Cohen explained.
During a nearly two-hour press conference on Wednesday, President Biden spoke on his accomplishments and challenges from the first year of his presidency, and what his administration hopes to accomplish in the coming year. However, his approval ratings are underwater as COVID remains a big concern for voters — as does inflation, noted Tom Bevan, co-founder and president of polling aggregator RealClearPolitics. "The public thinks [inflation] is priority number one, and the administration is concerned about it, they talk about it, but they're not spending enough time on it as far as the public is concerned," said Bevan.
The drama surrounding tennis star Novak Djokovic continues after he was deported from Australia over the weekend due to the nation's COVID-19 vaccine requirements. Djokovic was forced to leave the country on the eve of what was to be his first match in defense of his Australian Open title after three judges ruled in favor of his removal and revealed their reasoning for doing so. Adding to his woes, a law recently passed in France is putting his chances of defending his French Open title in jeopardy. The director of Marist's Center for Sports Communication, Jane McManus, joined Cheddar to discuss the ongoing fallout.
As the midterm elections get ever closer, candidates have been getting creative with their campaigns to stick out and to connect with voters. Gary Chambers, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Louisiana, has definitely attracted attention with an advertisement featuring him smoking a blunt, making a point about the inequity of anti-cannabis laws. "We wanted to bring the seriousness of the moment," he said of the ad. "But we also wanted to make sure that people understand that there are 19 states that are legal right now but Black people and brown people are being over-incarcerated in mostly Southern and Midwestern states in America for cannabis possession."
If some members of Congress have their way, there might finally be a 'TLDR' on sites' terms of service, introduced by the terms-of-service labeling, design, and readability act – or TLDR for short. With this act, users will actually understand what they're agreeing to or the many ways in which their data is being used before pressing 'accept.' J.D. sat down with co-sponsor of the bill and Senator Bill Cassidy, to discuss.
President Joe Biden's first year in office is wrapping up. What has he achieved, and what else remains on the table while the Democrats have control of Washington? Amid an ongoing pandemic and rising inflation, Biden's approval rating is at an all-time low and his party is plagued by infighting. Will he be able to continue pushing key parts of his agenda? Paul Glastris, former Bill Clinton speechwriter & Editor-in-chief of 'Washington Monthly,' joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss the president's achievements in his first year, where he's fallen short, and what he must do in order to get more of his agenda signed into law.
Tech giants Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Apple are faced with a bipartisan antitrust legislation effort underway in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The companies stand accused of promoting their own goods and services over smaller competitors on their platforms, holding too much monopolistic power via their app stores and services. Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a technology industry trade group, joined Cheddar to argue that the bills that are being debated currently could end up hurting consumers, rather than helping.
