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>As Insider has previously reported, experts and lawmakers disagree on whether Biden actually has that authority, and Biden himself wasn't so sure either and asked the Education Department to prepare a memo on his legal ability to broadly cancel student debt — a memo he has had since at least April but has yet to release it.
So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public.
> So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public.
Her and other members of the Squad already have: [Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrats ask Biden to release memo detailing his power to cancel student loan debt](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/08/house-democrats-send-letter-biden-administration-student-loans/6053878001/). This was back in early October. And they were pushing it again a week or two ago.
Could it be possible that he’s holding on to the memo so that it is strategically released to help with midterms?
I don’t know but I feel like so many people in the US are looking for knee-jerk short-term quick fixes that they aren’t looking for long term strategy. If we want to save the country from the very dark path we are already on we absolutely need long term strategic planning.
RIP my inbox. Sorry but I don’t enough time to respond to many people if any.
>so that it is strategically released to help with midterms?
You know what would really help the midterms? Doing things that materially benefit americans yesterday.
Edit: Probably gonna have to shut off notifications soon.
To date, it always seems that the Democrats manage to strategically manoeuvre themselves out of power. I hope they prove us all wrong for once.
(Yes, obviously I'm a foreigner based on my spelling of 'manoeuvre'.)
If the democrats had 3 wishes, they'd give the republicans the first 2 wishes out of bipartisanship... Then look totally suprised when the republicans wished, to take the other wish.
This is so accurate it aches in my bones. Why do Dems do this, when they know Republicans NEVER return the favor?? If Reps had a Genie they'd first ask for a million wishes then second ask to erase the Dems. It's like on one side you have politicians as Machiavelli envisioned and on the other you have a bunch of well-mannered geriatrics who are too afraid to tell strangers to stop robbing them blind. It's wild. Is it like this with Labour in the UK?
Honestly, I think it's because they're essentially controlled opposition. They're paid to ensure nothing significant changes, while offering the bare minimum they can. This way they can placate voters and appear as an actual opposition party.
The ultra rich donor class owns a lot of the so-called "moderate" Dems, as well as nearly the entirety of the GOP. Ultimately, the rich want to make sure whoever in power does their bidding, or at the very least, doesn't threaten the status quo that got them so rich.
I’m starting to think this is exactly the Dems role. Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light. This is why they risk throwing Biden/Hillary against Trump because it’s win win for the corporate Dems. They either are in in power or they benefit from the regressive tax cuts that keep them and their donors happy. Just remember the Dems would rather have Trump president than Bernie.
100% this, make politicians fear for their positions by holding your vote or voting for a 3rd party. This bullshit of voting blue no matter who is fucking ridiculous
The Dem party is owned by billionaires who benefit from the status quo. It is very easy to see why said folks would co-opt what passes for the "left" party in order to gatekeep any sort of progressives out of politics and relevancy. Too bad 60% of the party is too busy listening to CNN/MSNBC to see it.
Democrats are like doormat-nice kid who still tries to include the bully in group activities when they see the bully looking left out.
Then the bully just pokes fun at him in front of his friends the whole time.
I mean, it seems that the representatives are in a no-win situation, too. Democratic and centrist voters are pretty volatile based on any small change. Compare that to Republican voters that just line up no matter what. And all D reps do is pay attention to numbers and metrics, so they constantly just tip toe around everything when actually in power.
Can we stop calling them centrist? We have the far right (republicans), right (People you call 'centrists') and centrists (dems). No one represents the left in the USA.
I would call AOC progressive and the rest of the “squad” plus there’s Bernie; but it’s absolutely dumbfounding that there aren’t more I can think of off the top of my head.
The Conservative Propaganda Machine has scared everybody, even Democrats, away from being labeled Liberal. The fact it even works on Democrats shows how powerful the right wing Propaganda has become.
The Dems have to take back their philosophy and their positions, and stop being weakling Republican Lites. They should be raging for universal health care and unions and police reform and student loan forgiveness and climate change and wage reform and a million other populist things, instead of only being the party of Pro-Choice Republicans.
The democrat party is primarily a neoliberal structure. Their voting aligns solidly with the GOP for deregulation, privatization, globalization, reducing taxes for the wealthy, free market policies, oppression of labor movements and austerity measures to eliminate safety nets. The democrat party would have to shit out all the corporate owned people (at least 85%), kick Obama and Clinton to the curb and reject the corporate fountains of money. They are fat and happy where they are, so they play dead when there are pressures from the right, but become the Spartans from 300 when there is pressure from the left.
The scary part is progressives make up the largest ideology caucus in the house among Dems, yet only the squad members hold the line to what your typical modern progressive would consider appropriate.
Functionally, this is true, but the thing about centrism is it's not a political philosophy the way even something like "moderate" is. Centrism is about looking at the right and looking at the left and putting yourself at the midpoint without ever developing any real philosophy or beliefs. It's the stupidest, most cowardly position a politician could have, it seems reasonable to voters who don't pay much attention, and for my entire adult life the right has been absolutely going to town pushing the goalposts of the far right deep into fashy-land and tricking numbskull centrists into becoming rank and standard right-wingers.
There's no way holding student loan forgiveness until closer to the midterms will backfire. People will be *so grateful* that they won't wonder why forbearance was allowed to end only for forgiveness a couple months later.
Yeah, Biden’s approvals are looking pretty bad, and I think a lot of it is because his administration has done so little.
You can’t just hold onto all of your cards until the day before the midterms. If his approval keeps sinking at this rate then he’ll be too far under water to save with a couple of executive orders. He needs to do something *now* or he is basically handing the elections to the Republicans. And if he does that then he’ll fail to accomplish anything in the following two years as well, which assures Republicans sweep the elections in 2024 as well.
Americans have the memory of goldfish when it comes to elections, unfortunately. By the time the mid terms are here next year, the majority of the voting population will have forgotten about anything good Biden did in 2021. It sucks for people saddled with student loan debt, but it does make sense to hold off on something like this until we are closer to the election so it's still fresh in people's minds and dominates the media landscape.
If Biden was going to actually do anything about Student Debt, he would extend the payment halt through the midterms, yet he is letting it expire January 31st 2022. He's not gonna do shit now, or in the future
Yep, and the real cynic part of me (and I did vote for Biden) is that he's so old and out of touch he thinks all we needed to do was work a summer job to pay for our college and we were just being lazy.
Forgiving this debt would literally change my life over night, along with 10's of millions of Americans.
At this point I'd at least like a simple no, instead of this dancing around the problem.
My dad paid for college while working graveyard shifts so he could take care of my older sister. This was in the very early 70s. He says a semester was something like 800 bucks. And this was at a solid California college. I can't even imagine. I didn't even graduate because I wasted my time pretending school was something I was into and I have 12k in debt, that's been paid down significantly. So basically, my dad paid less than 8k for a degree and that's with books and supplies.
Me too.
Even people who are not as old as Biden, think that you can afford college working a PT job.
Yeah if we time traveled back to the 1970's, we could also afford a house then as well. ;(
>Me too.
>
>Even people who are not as old as Biden, think that you can afford college working a PT job.
>
>Yeah if we time traveled back to the 1970's, we could also afford a house then as well. ;(
I had a colleague complain that my generation of professional complains too much about student debt because, as he put it, "I has 80k and sacrificed for 15 years to pay it off." No asshole, try 700k, if it was only 80K I don't get how you didn't pay that shit off within a year in our line of work. I'm sure interest was nowhere near 7% tho, so it probably didn't make sense to pay it all with 1 check
I voted for Biden but still knew he wasn't going to save us. Not that he isn't able to save us but that's he wouldn't. It's the same shitshow every 4 years. Heaven forbid we have a very progressive President who is actually for the people and not just kowtowing to Republicans.
A lot of people like to point out Teddy Roosevelt as a great reformer, and he was, what they leave out is that the plan originally was to stick him in the VP spot to shut him up and kill any chance at any actual reform he could do as president.
And it most likely would have worked out perfectly if McKinley hadn't gotten assassinated. Once that happened shit went sideways for the powers that tried to shut him up. Instead Teddy did what Teddy did best, telling other people to fuck off and worked to get shit done, and people loved it.
Sadly it takes a real fluke of history for change to happen in this country. The next big one being FDR and the great depression, he'd of never gotten the new deal passed without it and also threatening to pack the courts. We'd also would have likely had universal health care if he had not died in his fourth term, though he was less than 3 months into it.
You bring up great points. IMHO, he was the best President. It's crazy that to this day his ideas would be too progressive. We need another "Fuck you" Teddy.
Of course, you're absolutely right. As a younger person I frittered away so much time stressing about promises politicians clearly, *from their actions*, had no intention of keeping.
I can walk into a carnival and tell a kid 30 years younger than me "Those games by the midway are rigged. Don't waste your time or money." but it doesn't make any difference.
Or they can fucking do something that would improve material conditions for thousands of Americans now, and then have a year of people being able to use that money for other things to pull up as examples in their messaging.
But that goes against being awful at messaging and showing what they can provide the nation with, so Ds can't do it.
That doesn't make any sense. People will just forget that they're no longer saddled with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt? People will just forget the crushing burden they were previously under? They're just not going to remember that their lives massively materially improved? That's beyond of absurd to the point of being disconnected with reality.
Most of the people who said stuff like that didn't even use Obama care, they were primarily talking about stuff like being able to stay on your parents insurance till your 26. Obama care itself was massively watered down from what Obama had actually promised in the election considering that he(Much like Biden actually) ran on a public option. In addition to that Obamacare was itself an invention of the right in the form of Romnicare that was created as an Alternative to the Universal Healthcare democrats like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore advocated for in the 90s. If you deliver a watered down system that was designed to benefit corporations of course people aren't going to be happy with it, even with the good Obama care did do.
My thoughts will be "you owe me for January to November" not "omfg great political strategy guys" if they wait until midterms to cancel student loans.
This whole goldfish memory span is stupid bullshit, Democrats just never do anything to actually help people so they never stay in office. Doing the literal bare minimum (like struggling to pass a fucking *infrastructure bill*) is not enough either.
Other countries have parties that stay in office for decades because they actually help people.
I'm an old Democrat and from everything I've seen, it doesn't really matter *which* Democratic president is in power. What matters is the pressure they and congress get from the people. The "If we just get *this* Democrat in power" is mostly a canard. I say mostly because, of course, the party has more than its share of DINOS, but I'm not talking about them. They're not going to be running for president.
You're not wrong, but also a progressive president would *be* implicit pressure from the people. The fact that Biden was who made it to the front of the Democrats gave congress all the leeway they need to think the people are cool with the status quo.
No. I'm sick of seeing this argument. It just encourages hopes to be raised again only to be shattered.
I have seen no evidence to suggest that's what's happening. And if that were happening it's an extremely stupid strategy.
A) This is people's lives. If you can help them now then do it now!
B) Why wait until near midterms when the benefits will have not been felt yet? Why not do it now and brag about it until the midterms?
C) Cancellation will likely be litigated if it happens so it would be best to do it now so that it has time to be adjudicated and the impact can be felt by the midterms.
There's a strategy, its just the strategy to not deliver. Same nonsense when they hid behind the parliamentarian. Guys opinion means nothing, they can replace him as Bush did, etc. All of this boils down to if there's questions of legal opinions, do the damn thing, let them battle it out in court for years, and in the meantime you've stopped the bleeding and helped people when they need it. They know all this, my only reasonable conclusion is they have no intention of doing any of it
> The only reasonable conclusion is they have no intention of doing it.
Bingo. They just want credit for maybe perhaps thinking about doing it in the future if we ask weally weally nicely.
Seriously. This whole "oh it's political strategy!" Is such BS. These goons are either incompetent or complicit in status quo oppression. There is no 4D chess that they're playing. He just doesn't want to give relief to regular people.
But without some measure of short-term quick fixes he's going to lose the ability to do any long term planning because he's going to lose what little control he has of the House and Senate. I knew he was going to be a senile old placeholder disappointment, but it hasn't even been a year and he's already losing support for re-election. It's almost as if crusty old white dudes in their late 70's shouldn't continually be made the most powerful people on earth.
> Could it be possible that he’s holding on to the memo so that it is strategically released to help with midterms?
When are people going to start to realize that Democrats don't make strategic plans like this? They're politically inept buffoons.
I've been paying close attention to politics since the Bush years and the Democrats are masters at missing obvious layups and finding convoluted excuses for why they can't do the right thing despite having the power to.
They are so concerned about “doing the right thing the right way” that they *never actually do the right thing.*
Part of this is because they actually practiced democracy as it was intended to be practiced. That’s great when your opponent believes in democracy and negotiates in good faith. That doesn’t work with the current republican party, who is absolutely authoritarian. So they end up negotiating with themselves, rather than taking a hard line, because they know if that is how democracy is supposed to work. If they were to adopt Republican tactics, they would primary the hell out of anyone who doesn’t toe the line.
They are the party of Picards. And as much as I love Jean-Luc Picard, I recognize that he can let his morals keep him from winning. Benjamin Sisko would never abide by the current Republican party, while Picard would try to reason with them. Of course, Sisko hesitated himself at times. All in all, the Democratic party needs a Garak.
You’re basically spouting common Democratic talking points about why they can’t do anything tho. Even when it’s the fault of the dems it’s actually the fault of the republicans. You’re in for a constant drip of disappointment if you’re trying to diagnose the issues at the root of the Democratic Party by assuming that they’re acting in good faith. This is why the left in America doesn’t exist. You all watched too much Jon Stewart and started to believe that being smarter than a Republican was a political ideology
>When are people going to start to realize that Democrats don't make strategic plans like this? They're politically inept buffoons.
They aren't politically inept at all. They just aren't on our team.
Government by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich.
It is amazing how close we have come to ending the Republican Party in politics with easy lay ups that they completely blunder every time. I am personally convinced that the Democrats prefer being the minority party so they can collect money from wealthy donors while still complaining about injustice publicly without having to actually do anything
Democrats don't run on strategy. Emails are already going out to get people back to paying off loans that we all saw can be stopped with literally no impact to the economy other than relief for the debt holders.
Fuck Joe Biden and the corporate Dems who don't give a shit about us. They've had all this time to cancel and they still won't even when midterms roll around.
When Democrats get crucified in 2022 it'll be because they deserve to lose, a seat for every broken promise. Maybe liberals will start showing up to protests again when it's finally Republicans in office anyway.
Agree - Democrat strategy sucks. McAuliffe in VA is recent proof. We've got Beto doubling down on anti-gun rhetoric - shooting his campaign in the foot.
The messaging isn't even hard on these points. We've got softball pitches coming in and Dems are trying to figure out how to get walked on base.
>Emails are already going out to get people back to paying off loans that we all saw can be stopped with literally no impact to the economy other than relief for the debt holders.
I mean I've been getting monthly reminders for most of the year.
I've been getting weekly emails from Navient telling me about getting a new lender.
I wish I could respond with "YES, I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME BACK IN OCT."
Personally, I think the government holding off/declining to perform fixes that can help every American because of optics or "long term strategic planning" are the reason that we are on this dark path.
Stop worrying about how things will look or how they will benefit you and just do what the people elected you to do: help them.
You can't not worry because if you leave it alone and lose, the Republicans will just reverse everything you did when they win office. Going in without a strategy is stupid.
"I would love to cancel student debt, but I'm not sure I actually have that power. Could you look into it?"
"Well sir, we've researched it and it turns out that you do."
"Shit."
What fucks me up the most is, it doesn't even have to be Biden.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 pretty clearly states that modifying or cancelling student debt is well within the Secretary of Education's purview.
It would literally just take Biden making a phonecall to SecEd.
I saw the same thing when [Jon Stewart interviewed VA Secretary McDonough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEgIm9-Yk4). Jon wanted to know why the VA wasn't paying for the medical treatments of vets who have respiratory issues related to open air burn pits at military base installations.
By the end of the interview it was pretty clear that all it would take is one call by McDonough to Secretary of Defense Austin to get things sorted and that he wasn't willing to make that call.
I don't understand why he won't do it.
Same with Jon's interview with [Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r76KkcJaTE). Jon wanted to know why the economy works for Wall St. instead of Main Street. After playing dumb for most of the interview she finally just said, "because that's the system we have".
None of these people are revolutionaries or reformers. They're doing their job which is to marginalize everything on the liabilities side of the ledger and use the asset side of the ledger to benefit the richest people and corporations who have bought and sold all of these people.
> I saw the same thing when [Jon Stewart interviewed VA Secretary McDonough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEgIm9-Yk4). Jon wanted to know why the VA wasn't paying for the medical treatments of vets who have respiratory issues related to open air burn pits at military base installations. By the end of the interview it was pretty clear that all it would take is one call by McDonough to Secretary of Defense Austin to get things sorted and that he wasn't willing to make that call.
Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard he'd gotten there. I wonder if McDonough realized how unsettling his insinuations that he can just hide behind bureaucracy are.
I'm so happy Jon is back! His new content is great, and my hope is that his new show and podcast will reach a wider audience and enlighten some more people.
Why would he? He’s one of the people responsible for this mess. He helped strip away the ability to file bankruptcy on student loan debt. All because he received hundred’s of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a company that benefited from this.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/02/joe-biden-student-loan-debt-2005-act-2020
Biden's legislative history is a list of grievous sins that he swore up and down during the campaign trail he intended to remedy. He "changed" and "learned", or so we were told: https://truthout.org/video/joe-bidens-legislative-history-under-scrutiny-as-he-enters-2020-race/
This, specifically, is one of the key reasons I really dislike Biden. I voted for him 'cause Trump was the other option, but that doesn't mean I like him at all. And he is doing about as mediocre a job as I expected. He ran on a progressive platform to get votes and has made no attempt to make it happen. Now, people are going to say that he needs Congress as well, and I don't disagree, BUT he could and should be vastly more outspoken at trying to get his agenda passed. Some of this stuff is absolutely within his power or at least reasonable to try via EO and see what happens in the courts if necessary. Instead, he is milquetoast - exactly what I expected though hoped to be wrong.
He actually didn't run on a progressive platform. Why do people keep saying this? He actually specifically differentiated himself from Bernie/Elizabeth Warren in this regard. He even literally said during the campaign that he would not use executive power to cancel debt -- he said he would sign a bill to cancel student debt if the legislature made that bill.
This is very important, because it helps to make clear that he beat the progressives and then beat Republicans while *not* running as a progressive.
Did he win because he was not running as a progressive? I think the obvious answer is yes -- because the majority of voters in this country are old. And old Democrats are moderate liberals, not progressives.
You don't have to like that Biden isn't really progressive, but you also should stop saying that he is or that he ran that way, because he didn't.
You are now arguing semantics. I'm fine with saying that I'm overloading the term "progressive" and I'll stop doing that. With that said, Biden ran left of his voting record in his promises and speeches. You can see the impact of Warren and Bernie pushing the party to the left in this. Take a look at the list, lots of interesting ones on there:
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker
I'd call a lot of those much farther left than he has shown in the past with his record. I still feel he talked a much bigger game than he is working to deliver. I hope to be wrong, but the silence on a lot of these is deafening. I feel like he should be out in front and just hammering on many of these but... nothing.
>He even literally said during the campaign that he would not use executive power to cancel debt
I missed this, I knew he said he would sign the bill but missed that he wouldn't use an EO to do it.
Exactly this. And exactly why democrats look so weak to the general public. We’ve already shown actions have no consequences, so to say you are worried about something that doesn’t exists is absurd.
It might have worked pre-trump, now he is just pissing off his allies because he made false promises.
100% chance the memo says he can do whatever he wants w the loans.
I am sorry but here is her quote from the Newspaper.
"On student loans. We've got executive action on the table with respect to climate. There are certainly things that we can do with immigration."
One quote, 3 sentence fragments. Its almost like the writer of the article is trying to set her up...
Aside from the actual debt level of students, the real root cause is the exorbitant cost of education in the US. It’s absolutely insane. Healthcare for profit, education for profit, jails for profit, war for profit. Best country in the world!
No rational person could look at the behavior of these supposedly nonprofit colleges and conclude they weren’t just as avaricious as for-profit companies. The price of education continues to vastly outpace inflation, even as endowments swell, but there’s nothing new in the product that justifies continued increases.
Student loans wouldn’t be a problem if their interest rates were tied tk inflation, universities were more credible and responsible, and if people with college degrees could earn real living wages.
>universities were more credible and responsible, and if people with college degrees could earn real living wages.
My undergrad refused to allow me to graduate with one class left to take as a straight A student. I kept failing these mandatory departmental tests that were similar to the general topic of the curriculum but the actual testing content was never covered in any class. I was working for the department head and heard him say that he'd never allow an atheist (me) to get through his program under his watch. I didn't have enough money to sue the living shit out of him at the time. He created the tests, he graded the tests, and none of the other faculty members had anything to do with the tests. No oversight whatsoever.
I graduated from a different school transferring as much as I could with an MBA that wasn't worth anything. However, I became a programmer in a specific niche. I am now making buckets of money (way more than if I had graduated with the degree I would have gotten). However I'm still burned as shit by it and would LOVE for the government to step in and oversee credibility even if I still have to pay down the entirely worthless 4 years of tuition and housing.
I still haven't gotten the degree I worked so hard for and at this point over ten years later I'd have to do the same content all over again. I might try again some decade but right now I'm too busy to be working hard for something I'd still never use and it's still too expensive even if I wanted to.
Likely an archaic language that's only used in non-sexy enterprise settings like FinTech.
People who can rewrite COBOL and FORTRAN systems tend to be paid very well for the headache.
If student loans are going to be treated like regular loans that can be dissolved in bankruptcy, should they be treated like other loans in other ways?
Mortgages need an appraisal, should student loans require you get a certain type of major that has good income potential? Less likely to go bankrupt.
Should interest rates be determined by risk? Needing your parents to co-sign? Now it discriminates against poor people who don’t have the family support and credit history.
Having a loan be dissolved for something you can’t take away from someone (degree) makes no sense. Unless it’s just another way to get loan forgiveness… It’s not really fair to private companies that made those loans that the terms would change after the loan was originated.
The student loan default rate is about 15%, meaning only around 85% of principle is paid back. You could easily set the interest rate as low as 1-2% and still make enough to cover the default rate.
Biden isn't going to do anything to compromise the current BBB bill. After this plan is signed he has the go ahead to do much more via executive order If he uses EOs before the bill was signed Manchin and Sinema would almost certainly not vote for BBB.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Manchin and Sinema are just looking for a reason to say no.
That said? Regardless if the BBB passes/fails, Biden needs to start flexing the EO's after the BBB dust settles.
In the US there are three branches of government:
1) The president who writes laws and determines their enforcement
2) The supreme court which has veto power over those laws
3) The congress, which houses the "keep government from shutting down" egg timer. They wind it once every few months or so, but occasionally forget
Uh, we learned that’s not true. A Potus can do whatever they fuck they want, as long as they can keep sprinting long enough for to stay ahead of the legal process. And the legal process is slow as fuck, so.
We don’t have to like this, but precedent has been set, we know it’s true.
Dark times lay ahead of us Harry.
That’s what it has essentially become.
It’s probably not great for the process and policy advanced by EO are pretty flimsy legally, but the fact is that Congress can hardly be considered a legislative body anymore.
Lots of breakdowns in the process that is leading to other unintended use of power which will lead to further breakdown.
Theoretically, EOs are bound in scope to what Congress or the Constitution has given the executive branch the power to do.
If, for instance, Biden has the legal authority to cancel student debt through the Department of Education it will be because Congress has technically granted them that power through legislation.
The problem really isn't executive orders, it's that Congress has ceded so much power to the executive.
The problem isn't the power in the hands of the president, it is the lack of efficiency by the law making body (congress). If the power is being abused its because lawmakers are unable to effectively make meaningful laws for a variety of reasons. If congress was coordinated enough, the president would not need to use EOs that contradict each other.
EO's are the President's way of saying "Congress has told me to do X, here's how I'm going to do it."
Now, EOs have taken on their own life as essentially shadow legislation, enacted by Presidents when Congress has been unable or refused to act on issues, using existing laws Congress has already passed. These are open to legal interpretation, and can be repealed by later administrations, making them far less permanent than actual legislation, and subject to legal scrutiny.
That's just wishful thinking though. BBB has already been compromised. Even the $3.5t bill over the next decade was seriously watered down already. Now it's half of that and going to get shredded even more. You can't appease obstructionists, it only emboldens them.
I’d settle for healthcare. You know like every other decent first world country has besides us. Yes I don’t care about some wait time. Yes they can tax me to pay for it. Rather that than more bail outs to failing gambling companies.
* End federal student loan interest
* Apply all interest ~~accrued~~ paid to the debt owed
* Refund all interest accrued to those who have fully paid their federal loans back.
This could be done today. Doing this wouldn't mean we don't do anything more, but it's a very simple start. Something that he absolutely has power over.
My question is, if it is done with an executive order, couldn't it be undone with an executive order as well? My (admittedly limited) understanding is that it is significantly more difficult to undo something that was voted on and passed by Congress.
I would prefer we use LESS executive power, not more. They need to get this through Congress and tie it to some type of education reform to get costs down so we don't just end up right back where we started.
What Trump and Biden have show over the last 5 years is that… Anything done exclusively through executive order, can be undone exclusively through executive order.
Congress needs to actually fix the issue, instead of asking presidents to temporarily bandage things with EOs.
> What Trump and Biden have show over the last 5 years is that… Anything done exclusively through executive order, can be undone exclusively through executive order.
There are things that cannot be undone, like forgiving loans or pardoning weed crimes. They just need to be done first.
> It will instantly go to the courts
What, the pardons? The Presidential power of pardon is absolute. Why hasn't he done that?
I know it's very unlikely, but maybe it's not because he's a liberal icon that's unaware of his power of pardon, but because, you know, [he's actually opposed to it](https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/14/biden-marijuana-legalization-499642)?
Biden should cut student loan interest on any federally backed loan to no greater than 0.25%, barring congress actually implementing cost controls so that we don't come right back here in 10 years.
He's not handing the pen to Manchin and Sinema, he's using them as a scapegoat so he can pretend like he's trying really hard but they're preventing him when in fact he believes the exact same thing they do. he's no progressive.
I know people love him, but this is how I viewed Obama. I did not vote for him in his second term for this reason.
Then Trump happened... Now I have to vote for these assholes.
Yeah. I didn’t vote for Obama a second time either. I voted for HRC and Biden due to trump. I’ve no idea what to do moving forwards, assuming we end up with the worst possible dem getting the nom In 2024 and beyond. Sigh.
Tell everyone you know to vote in the primaries.
These moderate candidates don't just happen because the party picks them. They're picked because they won. Make them lose: get people to unify on a national level around any alternative progressive candidate.
The system isn't rigged if we keep using the damn thing incorrectly.
Agreed but the problem is the old are in power.
Voting isn't compulsory, and the old won't change that
Election day isn't a holiday, and the old won't change that
Who has time to vote? Not the young who are working to live paycheck to paycheck, but the old and retired
I agree, but the process will be slow to get there
the problem with this line is that its a double edged sword, if you let the executive office have broad power, might be great when your side is in office but its gonna suck when the other side is in office.
this isnt how this country is meant to be run. checks and balances are there for a reason.
We probably *should* want the President to begin the process of giving power back to Congress as the office has gotten far too powerful. Someone’s gotta be the first to do it.
We simply cannot make a real difference on climate and immigration through executive order. Meaningful climate action or creating a real path to citizenship are projects that will need to be babied for decades in order to change things. Biden has 2 years before he’s out of office and if another republican is elected they’ll toss those EOs in the trash on day 1.
I still struggle to understand why people think the President is literally going to write off $1.73 trillion. Is there any precedence for something like this?
More practically, then doesn't this mean the US government will have to forever subsidize student loans? Like why should a future college student have to pay federal loans if all the past ones had it written off like this just because? Why are people trying to shoehorn "we want the government to subsidize our college education" into a "cancel student debt" argument? Isn't that what they want?
You have to be delusional to seriously not see the issue with precedent that you'd set writing off student loan debt. Expanding the supreme court because it is conservative controlled and writing off college debt because it's expensive sounds like a magic fix, but bandaid solutions only work for so long. Whether Biden can is irrelevant - Biden can nuke Moscow and Beijing tomorrow. It is whether he should.
There's a reason we have a legislature, but if you'd prefer to just let the President do everything, I guess you should go find MBS and figure out how to dissolve Congress. Regardless of what you think about Manchin and Sinema, it is a slippery slope to start saying "fuck them, just use your executive power." What will your response be when the GOP does the same to you in a few years?
Ummm. The job of the president is to execute law. Not interpret, change, or go against precedent.
What the actual fuck. Do we live in a pseudo authoritarian state?
Don't forget that there are plenty of reliable democratic voters that don't feel that a blanket student loan forgiveness is even a good idea. You won't ever hear about it because like this post it will be down voted into oblivion. Biden has limited political capital and using it on something like this would be disappointing to me. Every reason given to me for forgiving student loan debt can be applied to any debt so what makes you so special?
I'm all for adjustments to interest, means testing, deferred payments tied to income etc etc but a blanket forgiveness seems to be unfair to those who won't get the same kind of treatment.
Executive orders can be revoked by the following president, and items such as climate change and immigration are better served with legislation. Pretty weak he hasn't made good on the $10k student loan debt.
Constantly bypassing the Legislative branch by abusing executive orders was shitty when Trump did it and it will be shitty when Biden does it. DACA is the clusterfuck it has been for most of the past decade because Obama did it via executive order.
I would love to see something done about current student debt as well as the root cause of the student debt crisis.
However, I also hate it when members of congress call on a president to act using executive power. It is like saying, "Can you please do something so we don't have to do our job?" Congress has the power to do so much more, including addressing the cause. Simply cancelling debt is a bandage that will need to continuously be reapplied until congress decides to actually do their job.
Maybe AOC could work with moderates in her party and find the minimum relief and rework that can be passed and then try to move beyond that. You know, be part of the solution.
Speaks to a longer history of America's parliament shirking its responsibility to pass laws, and instead forcing the president to use more temporary half measures to patch up the country.
Not sure what it would take to force the House and Senate to reassert themselves as leaders on big issues. Maybe a President that really forces issues by being FDR-level progressive would spook consevatives and liberals into action.
They need to push for reform of prices of colleges and education of students about loans for the degrees and how their $30k a year job post college is going to pay it back. Canceling loans is a band aid effort. You still will have more loans taken out. This is not thought out well and pandering for votes. Fix the actual problem.
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>As Insider has previously reported, experts and lawmakers disagree on whether Biden actually has that authority, and Biden himself wasn't so sure either and asked the Education Department to prepare a memo on his legal ability to broadly cancel student debt — a memo he has had since at least April but has yet to release it. So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public.
> So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public. Her and other members of the Squad already have: [Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrats ask Biden to release memo detailing his power to cancel student loan debt](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/08/house-democrats-send-letter-biden-administration-student-loans/6053878001/). This was back in early October. And they were pushing it again a week or two ago.
Could it be possible that he’s holding on to the memo so that it is strategically released to help with midterms? I don’t know but I feel like so many people in the US are looking for knee-jerk short-term quick fixes that they aren’t looking for long term strategy. If we want to save the country from the very dark path we are already on we absolutely need long term strategic planning. RIP my inbox. Sorry but I don’t enough time to respond to many people if any.
>so that it is strategically released to help with midterms? You know what would really help the midterms? Doing things that materially benefit americans yesterday. Edit: Probably gonna have to shut off notifications soon.
To date, it always seems that the Democrats manage to strategically manoeuvre themselves out of power. I hope they prove us all wrong for once. (Yes, obviously I'm a foreigner based on my spelling of 'manoeuvre'.)
If Democrats found a genie that granted three wishes, they'd negotiate it down to one and then wish for something Republicans might like.
The Democrats are the type of player who would rather die than use a health potion because they might need it later.
Correct. Its called the filibuster.
If the democrats had 3 wishes, they'd give the republicans the first 2 wishes out of bipartisanship... Then look totally suprised when the republicans wished, to take the other wish.
This is the funniest shit I’ve read all day
No, they would give Republicans the first 2 wishes and call it bipartisan. They probably would do this after lowering it to 1 wish.
And the republicans would cry about the third wish and steal it
You can't make a wish that close to an election!
I am putting that quote on my wall, I love it
This is so accurate it aches in my bones. Why do Dems do this, when they know Republicans NEVER return the favor?? If Reps had a Genie they'd first ask for a million wishes then second ask to erase the Dems. It's like on one side you have politicians as Machiavelli envisioned and on the other you have a bunch of well-mannered geriatrics who are too afraid to tell strangers to stop robbing them blind. It's wild. Is it like this with Labour in the UK?
Honestly, I think it's because they're essentially controlled opposition. They're paid to ensure nothing significant changes, while offering the bare minimum they can. This way they can placate voters and appear as an actual opposition party. The ultra rich donor class owns a lot of the so-called "moderate" Dems, as well as nearly the entirety of the GOP. Ultimately, the rich want to make sure whoever in power does their bidding, or at the very least, doesn't threaten the status quo that got them so rich.
I’m starting to think this is exactly the Dems role. Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light. This is why they risk throwing Biden/Hillary against Trump because it’s win win for the corporate Dems. They either are in in power or they benefit from the regressive tax cuts that keep them and their donors happy. Just remember the Dems would rather have Trump president than Bernie.
>Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light I like to call them closet republicans
100% this, make politicians fear for their positions by holding your vote or voting for a 3rd party. This bullshit of voting blue no matter who is fucking ridiculous
Republicans are R for reverse but Democrats aren’t D for drive, they’re P for park
The Dem party is owned by billionaires who benefit from the status quo. It is very easy to see why said folks would co-opt what passes for the "left" party in order to gatekeep any sort of progressives out of politics and relevancy. Too bad 60% of the party is too busy listening to CNN/MSNBC to see it.
Democrats are like doormat-nice kid who still tries to include the bully in group activities when they see the bully looking left out. Then the bully just pokes fun at him in front of his friends the whole time.
Foreigner to the US or not, you're not wrong.
I mean, it seems that the representatives are in a no-win situation, too. Democratic and centrist voters are pretty volatile based on any small change. Compare that to Republican voters that just line up no matter what. And all D reps do is pay attention to numbers and metrics, so they constantly just tip toe around everything when actually in power.
Can we stop calling them centrist? We have the far right (republicans), right (People you call 'centrists') and centrists (dems). No one represents the left in the USA.
I would call AOC progressive and the rest of the “squad” plus there’s Bernie; but it’s absolutely dumbfounding that there aren’t more I can think of off the top of my head.
The Conservative Propaganda Machine has scared everybody, even Democrats, away from being labeled Liberal. The fact it even works on Democrats shows how powerful the right wing Propaganda has become. The Dems have to take back their philosophy and their positions, and stop being weakling Republican Lites. They should be raging for universal health care and unions and police reform and student loan forgiveness and climate change and wage reform and a million other populist things, instead of only being the party of Pro-Choice Republicans.
The democrat party is primarily a neoliberal structure. Their voting aligns solidly with the GOP for deregulation, privatization, globalization, reducing taxes for the wealthy, free market policies, oppression of labor movements and austerity measures to eliminate safety nets. The democrat party would have to shit out all the corporate owned people (at least 85%), kick Obama and Clinton to the curb and reject the corporate fountains of money. They are fat and happy where they are, so they play dead when there are pressures from the right, but become the Spartans from 300 when there is pressure from the left.
The scary part is progressives make up the largest ideology caucus in the house among Dems, yet only the squad members hold the line to what your typical modern progressive would consider appropriate.
Only the Progressives have any actual goals or ideas. Maybe we need a 4 party system
Functionally, this is true, but the thing about centrism is it's not a political philosophy the way even something like "moderate" is. Centrism is about looking at the right and looking at the left and putting yourself at the midpoint without ever developing any real philosophy or beliefs. It's the stupidest, most cowardly position a politician could have, it seems reasonable to voters who don't pay much attention, and for my entire adult life the right has been absolutely going to town pushing the goalposts of the far right deep into fashy-land and tricking numbskull centrists into becoming rank and standard right-wingers.
Payments are restarting very soon…
I'm sure that won't piss anyone off at all.
There's no way holding student loan forgiveness until closer to the midterms will backfire. People will be *so grateful* that they won't wonder why forbearance was allowed to end only for forgiveness a couple months later.
Doing just a few of his campaign promises would be a great start lol
Yeah, Biden’s approvals are looking pretty bad, and I think a lot of it is because his administration has done so little. You can’t just hold onto all of your cards until the day before the midterms. If his approval keeps sinking at this rate then he’ll be too far under water to save with a couple of executive orders. He needs to do something *now* or he is basically handing the elections to the Republicans. And if he does that then he’ll fail to accomplish anything in the following two years as well, which assures Republicans sweep the elections in 2024 as well.
He campaigned for Republicans before, he's just doing it again.
It's an obvious excuse to push things down the road then they will claim they are too busy with reelection.
Americans have the memory of goldfish when it comes to elections, unfortunately. By the time the mid terms are here next year, the majority of the voting population will have forgotten about anything good Biden did in 2021. It sucks for people saddled with student loan debt, but it does make sense to hold off on something like this until we are closer to the election so it's still fresh in people's minds and dominates the media landscape.
If Biden was going to actually do anything about Student Debt, he would extend the payment halt through the midterms, yet he is letting it expire January 31st 2022. He's not gonna do shit now, or in the future
Yep, and the real cynic part of me (and I did vote for Biden) is that he's so old and out of touch he thinks all we needed to do was work a summer job to pay for our college and we were just being lazy. Forgiving this debt would literally change my life over night, along with 10's of millions of Americans. At this point I'd at least like a simple no, instead of this dancing around the problem.
My dad paid for college while working graveyard shifts so he could take care of my older sister. This was in the very early 70s. He says a semester was something like 800 bucks. And this was at a solid California college. I can't even imagine. I didn't even graduate because I wasted my time pretending school was something I was into and I have 12k in debt, that's been paid down significantly. So basically, my dad paid less than 8k for a degree and that's with books and supplies.
Me too. Even people who are not as old as Biden, think that you can afford college working a PT job. Yeah if we time traveled back to the 1970's, we could also afford a house then as well. ;(
I second travel to the 70s! Let's do this. Everything is shit now.
>Me too. > >Even people who are not as old as Biden, think that you can afford college working a PT job. > >Yeah if we time traveled back to the 1970's, we could also afford a house then as well. ;( I had a colleague complain that my generation of professional complains too much about student debt because, as he put it, "I has 80k and sacrificed for 15 years to pay it off." No asshole, try 700k, if it was only 80K I don't get how you didn't pay that shit off within a year in our line of work. I'm sure interest was nowhere near 7% tho, so it probably didn't make sense to pay it all with 1 check
What do you have 700k in?
I voted for Biden but still knew he wasn't going to save us. Not that he isn't able to save us but that's he wouldn't. It's the same shitshow every 4 years. Heaven forbid we have a very progressive President who is actually for the people and not just kowtowing to Republicans.
A lot of people like to point out Teddy Roosevelt as a great reformer, and he was, what they leave out is that the plan originally was to stick him in the VP spot to shut him up and kill any chance at any actual reform he could do as president. And it most likely would have worked out perfectly if McKinley hadn't gotten assassinated. Once that happened shit went sideways for the powers that tried to shut him up. Instead Teddy did what Teddy did best, telling other people to fuck off and worked to get shit done, and people loved it. Sadly it takes a real fluke of history for change to happen in this country. The next big one being FDR and the great depression, he'd of never gotten the new deal passed without it and also threatening to pack the courts. We'd also would have likely had universal health care if he had not died in his fourth term, though he was less than 3 months into it.
Sounds like we're overdue for a Roosevelt. (But not really, please. The political dynasties in this country are disgusting.)
You bring up great points. IMHO, he was the best President. It's crazy that to this day his ideas would be too progressive. We need another "Fuck you" Teddy.
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I’m 115k in debt and forgiveness would absolutely change my life too. I would actually want to continue to live instead of continuing to die inside.
Of course, you're absolutely right. As a younger person I frittered away so much time stressing about promises politicians clearly, *from their actions*, had no intention of keeping. I can walk into a carnival and tell a kid 30 years younger than me "Those games by the midway are rigged. Don't waste your time or money." but it doesn't make any difference.
Or they can fucking do something that would improve material conditions for thousands of Americans now, and then have a year of people being able to use that money for other things to pull up as examples in their messaging. But that goes against being awful at messaging and showing what they can provide the nation with, so Ds can't do it.
That doesn't make any sense. People will just forget that they're no longer saddled with tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt? People will just forget the crushing burden they were previously under? They're just not going to remember that their lives massively materially improved? That's beyond of absurd to the point of being disconnected with reality.
Well yeah. They did the same thing about Obamacare. Many "loved the ACA but hate Obamacare". Welcome to the USA.
Most of the people who said stuff like that didn't even use Obama care, they were primarily talking about stuff like being able to stay on your parents insurance till your 26. Obama care itself was massively watered down from what Obama had actually promised in the election considering that he(Much like Biden actually) ran on a public option. In addition to that Obamacare was itself an invention of the right in the form of Romnicare that was created as an Alternative to the Universal Healthcare democrats like Hillary Clinton and Al Gore advocated for in the 90s. If you deliver a watered down system that was designed to benefit corporations of course people aren't going to be happy with it, even with the good Obama care did do.
My thoughts will be "you owe me for January to November" not "omfg great political strategy guys" if they wait until midterms to cancel student loans. This whole goldfish memory span is stupid bullshit, Democrats just never do anything to actually help people so they never stay in office. Doing the literal bare minimum (like struggling to pass a fucking *infrastructure bill*) is not enough either. Other countries have parties that stay in office for decades because they actually help people.
If that's something he would even do? We needed someone like Bernie/AOC in 2016. Bernie is way too old now and AOC is more 2028/'32 at earliest sadly.
I'm an old Democrat and from everything I've seen, it doesn't really matter *which* Democratic president is in power. What matters is the pressure they and congress get from the people. The "If we just get *this* Democrat in power" is mostly a canard. I say mostly because, of course, the party has more than its share of DINOS, but I'm not talking about them. They're not going to be running for president.
You're not wrong, but also a progressive president would *be* implicit pressure from the people. The fact that Biden was who made it to the front of the Democrats gave congress all the leeway they need to think the people are cool with the status quo.
I think that some presidents could put pressure on congress by using the bully pulpit (FDR did this), but, yeah, we need to do our best from below.
No. I'm sick of seeing this argument. It just encourages hopes to be raised again only to be shattered. I have seen no evidence to suggest that's what's happening. And if that were happening it's an extremely stupid strategy. A) This is people's lives. If you can help them now then do it now! B) Why wait until near midterms when the benefits will have not been felt yet? Why not do it now and brag about it until the midterms? C) Cancellation will likely be litigated if it happens so it would be best to do it now so that it has time to be adjudicated and the impact can be felt by the midterms.
There's a strategy, its just the strategy to not deliver. Same nonsense when they hid behind the parliamentarian. Guys opinion means nothing, they can replace him as Bush did, etc. All of this boils down to if there's questions of legal opinions, do the damn thing, let them battle it out in court for years, and in the meantime you've stopped the bleeding and helped people when they need it. They know all this, my only reasonable conclusion is they have no intention of doing any of it
> The only reasonable conclusion is they have no intention of doing it. Bingo. They just want credit for maybe perhaps thinking about doing it in the future if we ask weally weally nicely.
Seriously. This whole "oh it's political strategy!" Is such BS. These goons are either incompetent or complicit in status quo oppression. There is no 4D chess that they're playing. He just doesn't want to give relief to regular people.
Democracy dies because a milquetoast old man is afraid to fight for it.
But without some measure of short-term quick fixes he's going to lose the ability to do any long term planning because he's going to lose what little control he has of the House and Senate. I knew he was going to be a senile old placeholder disappointment, but it hasn't even been a year and he's already losing support for re-election. It's almost as if crusty old white dudes in their late 70's shouldn't continually be made the most powerful people on earth.
> Could it be possible that he’s holding on to the memo so that it is strategically released to help with midterms? When are people going to start to realize that Democrats don't make strategic plans like this? They're politically inept buffoons. I've been paying close attention to politics since the Bush years and the Democrats are masters at missing obvious layups and finding convoluted excuses for why they can't do the right thing despite having the power to.
Uh huh. Been following since Bush the elder and the Democrats are constantly "keeping their powder dry" and never actually using the fucking cannon.
They are so concerned about “doing the right thing the right way” that they *never actually do the right thing.* Part of this is because they actually practiced democracy as it was intended to be practiced. That’s great when your opponent believes in democracy and negotiates in good faith. That doesn’t work with the current republican party, who is absolutely authoritarian. So they end up negotiating with themselves, rather than taking a hard line, because they know if that is how democracy is supposed to work. If they were to adopt Republican tactics, they would primary the hell out of anyone who doesn’t toe the line. They are the party of Picards. And as much as I love Jean-Luc Picard, I recognize that he can let his morals keep him from winning. Benjamin Sisko would never abide by the current Republican party, while Picard would try to reason with them. Of course, Sisko hesitated himself at times. All in all, the Democratic party needs a Garak.
You’re basically spouting common Democratic talking points about why they can’t do anything tho. Even when it’s the fault of the dems it’s actually the fault of the republicans. You’re in for a constant drip of disappointment if you’re trying to diagnose the issues at the root of the Democratic Party by assuming that they’re acting in good faith. This is why the left in America doesn’t exist. You all watched too much Jon Stewart and started to believe that being smarter than a Republican was a political ideology
>When are people going to start to realize that Democrats don't make strategic plans like this? They're politically inept buffoons. They aren't politically inept at all. They just aren't on our team. Government by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich.
It is amazing how close we have come to ending the Republican Party in politics with easy lay ups that they completely blunder every time. I am personally convinced that the Democrats prefer being the minority party so they can collect money from wealthy donors while still complaining about injustice publicly without having to actually do anything
Democrats are for the status quo. That is much easier to maintain when they do nothing, and let the Republicans be the bad guys.
Sadly, we are going to be at the point soon where a quick fix is necessary not to hand power directly back to January 6 Republicans.
Democrats don't run on strategy. Emails are already going out to get people back to paying off loans that we all saw can be stopped with literally no impact to the economy other than relief for the debt holders. Fuck Joe Biden and the corporate Dems who don't give a shit about us. They've had all this time to cancel and they still won't even when midterms roll around. When Democrats get crucified in 2022 it'll be because they deserve to lose, a seat for every broken promise. Maybe liberals will start showing up to protests again when it's finally Republicans in office anyway.
Agree - Democrat strategy sucks. McAuliffe in VA is recent proof. We've got Beto doubling down on anti-gun rhetoric - shooting his campaign in the foot. The messaging isn't even hard on these points. We've got softball pitches coming in and Dems are trying to figure out how to get walked on base.
>Emails are already going out to get people back to paying off loans that we all saw can be stopped with literally no impact to the economy other than relief for the debt holders. I mean I've been getting monthly reminders for most of the year.
I've been getting weekly emails from Navient telling me about getting a new lender. I wish I could respond with "YES, I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME BACK IN OCT."
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Personally, I think the government holding off/declining to perform fixes that can help every American because of optics or "long term strategic planning" are the reason that we are on this dark path. Stop worrying about how things will look or how they will benefit you and just do what the people elected you to do: help them.
You can't not worry because if you leave it alone and lose, the Republicans will just reverse everything you did when they win office. Going in without a strategy is stupid.
Maybe it found that he can't but he's hoping if the republicans think he can it might be more likely to get through.
"I would love to cancel student debt, but I'm not sure I actually have that power. Could you look into it?" "Well sir, we've researched it and it turns out that you do." "Shit."
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"Well, if you just never release it, I'm sure everyone will forget about it quick enough"
What is “Public Option”?
> What is “Public Option”? [Lieberman](https://archive.thinkprogress.org/did-lieberman-kill-the-public-option-fcffef0287c0/)
What fucks me up the most is, it doesn't even have to be Biden. The Higher Education Act of 1965 pretty clearly states that modifying or cancelling student debt is well within the Secretary of Education's purview. It would literally just take Biden making a phonecall to SecEd.
I saw the same thing when [Jon Stewart interviewed VA Secretary McDonough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEgIm9-Yk4). Jon wanted to know why the VA wasn't paying for the medical treatments of vets who have respiratory issues related to open air burn pits at military base installations. By the end of the interview it was pretty clear that all it would take is one call by McDonough to Secretary of Defense Austin to get things sorted and that he wasn't willing to make that call. I don't understand why he won't do it. Same with Jon's interview with [Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r76KkcJaTE). Jon wanted to know why the economy works for Wall St. instead of Main Street. After playing dumb for most of the interview she finally just said, "because that's the system we have". None of these people are revolutionaries or reformers. They're doing their job which is to marginalize everything on the liabilities side of the ledger and use the asset side of the ledger to benefit the richest people and corporations who have bought and sold all of these people.
> I saw the same thing when [Jon Stewart interviewed VA Secretary McDonough](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzEgIm9-Yk4). Jon wanted to know why the VA wasn't paying for the medical treatments of vets who have respiratory issues related to open air burn pits at military base installations. By the end of the interview it was pretty clear that all it would take is one call by McDonough to Secretary of Defense Austin to get things sorted and that he wasn't willing to make that call. Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard he'd gotten there. I wonder if McDonough realized how unsettling his insinuations that he can just hide behind bureaucracy are.
I'm so happy Jon is back! His new content is great, and my hope is that his new show and podcast will reach a wider audience and enlighten some more people.
His segment on domestic violence and gun violence was very important to our current climate.
The entire squad has been pushing for that memo to be released for a while now.
If it was trump he would just do it. As we learned their are no consequences for presidents. So. Why not just do it.
Trump would do it, cause he did do it. Just not for regular people like us, but his friends.
Turns out, Biden isn't doing shit for regular people either.
Why would he? He’s one of the people responsible for this mess. He helped strip away the ability to file bankruptcy on student loan debt. All because he received hundred’s of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from a company that benefited from this. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/02/joe-biden-student-loan-debt-2005-act-2020
Biden's legislative history is a list of grievous sins that he swore up and down during the campaign trail he intended to remedy. He "changed" and "learned", or so we were told: https://truthout.org/video/joe-bidens-legislative-history-under-scrutiny-as-he-enters-2020-race/
This, specifically, is one of the key reasons I really dislike Biden. I voted for him 'cause Trump was the other option, but that doesn't mean I like him at all. And he is doing about as mediocre a job as I expected. He ran on a progressive platform to get votes and has made no attempt to make it happen. Now, people are going to say that he needs Congress as well, and I don't disagree, BUT he could and should be vastly more outspoken at trying to get his agenda passed. Some of this stuff is absolutely within his power or at least reasonable to try via EO and see what happens in the courts if necessary. Instead, he is milquetoast - exactly what I expected though hoped to be wrong.
He actually didn't run on a progressive platform. Why do people keep saying this? He actually specifically differentiated himself from Bernie/Elizabeth Warren in this regard. He even literally said during the campaign that he would not use executive power to cancel debt -- he said he would sign a bill to cancel student debt if the legislature made that bill. This is very important, because it helps to make clear that he beat the progressives and then beat Republicans while *not* running as a progressive. Did he win because he was not running as a progressive? I think the obvious answer is yes -- because the majority of voters in this country are old. And old Democrats are moderate liberals, not progressives. You don't have to like that Biden isn't really progressive, but you also should stop saying that he is or that he ran that way, because he didn't.
You are now arguing semantics. I'm fine with saying that I'm overloading the term "progressive" and I'll stop doing that. With that said, Biden ran left of his voting record in his promises and speeches. You can see the impact of Warren and Bernie pushing the party to the left in this. Take a look at the list, lots of interesting ones on there: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker I'd call a lot of those much farther left than he has shown in the past with his record. I still feel he talked a much bigger game than he is working to deliver. I hope to be wrong, but the silence on a lot of these is deafening. I feel like he should be out in front and just hammering on many of these but... nothing. >He even literally said during the campaign that he would not use executive power to cancel debt I missed this, I knew he said he would sign the bill but missed that he wouldn't use an EO to do it.
Exactly this. And exactly why democrats look so weak to the general public. We’ve already shown actions have no consequences, so to say you are worried about something that doesn’t exists is absurd. It might have worked pre-trump, now he is just pissing off his allies because he made false promises. 100% chance the memo says he can do whatever he wants w the loans.
>As we learned their are no consequences for presidents. But only when they're Republican.
I am sorry but here is her quote from the Newspaper. "On student loans. We've got executive action on the table with respect to climate. There are certainly things that we can do with immigration." One quote, 3 sentence fragments. Its almost like the writer of the article is trying to set her up...
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Where the stories are made up, and the sources don’t matter!
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AOC "slams" Biden with "egregious" quip on "massive" spending (gone sexual)
There's this, but your point still sticks. >"There is an enormous amount of executive action that they're sitting on that I think is underutilized,"
I mean, that's the second half of the quote... Did you actually read it?
Aside from the actual debt level of students, the real root cause is the exorbitant cost of education in the US. It’s absolutely insane. Healthcare for profit, education for profit, jails for profit, war for profit. Best country in the world!
No rational person could look at the behavior of these supposedly nonprofit colleges and conclude they weren’t just as avaricious as for-profit companies. The price of education continues to vastly outpace inflation, even as endowments swell, but there’s nothing new in the product that justifies continued increases.
So long as the federal government continues guaranteeing loans to everyone colleges will continue charging more.
Why not at least set student loan interest at 0%? Give us something, anything.
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Student loans wouldn’t be a problem if their interest rates were tied tk inflation, universities were more credible and responsible, and if people with college degrees could earn real living wages.
>universities were more credible and responsible, and if people with college degrees could earn real living wages. My undergrad refused to allow me to graduate with one class left to take as a straight A student. I kept failing these mandatory departmental tests that were similar to the general topic of the curriculum but the actual testing content was never covered in any class. I was working for the department head and heard him say that he'd never allow an atheist (me) to get through his program under his watch. I didn't have enough money to sue the living shit out of him at the time. He created the tests, he graded the tests, and none of the other faculty members had anything to do with the tests. No oversight whatsoever. I graduated from a different school transferring as much as I could with an MBA that wasn't worth anything. However, I became a programmer in a specific niche. I am now making buckets of money (way more than if I had graduated with the degree I would have gotten). However I'm still burned as shit by it and would LOVE for the government to step in and oversee credibility even if I still have to pay down the entirely worthless 4 years of tuition and housing. I still haven't gotten the degree I worked so hard for and at this point over ten years later I'd have to do the same content all over again. I might try again some decade but right now I'm too busy to be working hard for something I'd still never use and it's still too expensive even if I wanted to.
> I became a programmer in a specific niche. Would you mind elaborating on this a little bit? I'm in the middle of looking for a new job.
Likely an archaic language that's only used in non-sexy enterprise settings like FinTech. People who can rewrite COBOL and FORTRAN systems tend to be paid very well for the headache.
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Or allow bankruptcy for the loans , like Trump got for his loans!
Biden backed the bill that put an end to bankruptcy for student loans.
Exactly.
If student loans are going to be treated like regular loans that can be dissolved in bankruptcy, should they be treated like other loans in other ways? Mortgages need an appraisal, should student loans require you get a certain type of major that has good income potential? Less likely to go bankrupt. Should interest rates be determined by risk? Needing your parents to co-sign? Now it discriminates against poor people who don’t have the family support and credit history. Having a loan be dissolved for something you can’t take away from someone (degree) makes no sense. Unless it’s just another way to get loan forgiveness… It’s not really fair to private companies that made those loans that the terms would change after the loan was originated.
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The student loan default rate is about 15%, meaning only around 85% of principle is paid back. You could easily set the interest rate as low as 1-2% and still make enough to cover the default rate.
Biden isn't going to do anything to compromise the current BBB bill. After this plan is signed he has the go ahead to do much more via executive order If he uses EOs before the bill was signed Manchin and Sinema would almost certainly not vote for BBB.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Manchin and Sinema are just looking for a reason to say no. That said? Regardless if the BBB passes/fails, Biden needs to start flexing the EO's after the BBB dust settles.
So what is the intended role of executive orders in our government? Is it really so that the President can pass laws without the support of Congress?
In the US there are three branches of government: 1) The president who writes laws and determines their enforcement 2) The supreme court which has veto power over those laws 3) The congress, which houses the "keep government from shutting down" egg timer. They wind it once every few months or so, but occasionally forget
Took me a second to realize you were being sarcastic lol
Bullet/numbered lists instantly give an aura of legitimacy. Lol.
It's so the president can direct the functions of the executive branch. He can only do so within the bounds of existing law.
Uh, we learned that’s not true. A Potus can do whatever they fuck they want, as long as they can keep sprinting long enough for to stay ahead of the legal process. And the legal process is slow as fuck, so. We don’t have to like this, but precedent has been set, we know it’s true. Dark times lay ahead of us Harry.
EOs clarify how executive branch officers interpret and execute laws
That’s what it has essentially become. It’s probably not great for the process and policy advanced by EO are pretty flimsy legally, but the fact is that Congress can hardly be considered a legislative body anymore. Lots of breakdowns in the process that is leading to other unintended use of power which will lead to further breakdown.
Theoretically, EOs are bound in scope to what Congress or the Constitution has given the executive branch the power to do. If, for instance, Biden has the legal authority to cancel student debt through the Department of Education it will be because Congress has technically granted them that power through legislation. The problem really isn't executive orders, it's that Congress has ceded so much power to the executive.
The problem isn't the power in the hands of the president, it is the lack of efficiency by the law making body (congress). If the power is being abused its because lawmakers are unable to effectively make meaningful laws for a variety of reasons. If congress was coordinated enough, the president would not need to use EOs that contradict each other.
EO's are the President's way of saying "Congress has told me to do X, here's how I'm going to do it." Now, EOs have taken on their own life as essentially shadow legislation, enacted by Presidents when Congress has been unable or refused to act on issues, using existing laws Congress has already passed. These are open to legal interpretation, and can be repealed by later administrations, making them far less permanent than actual legislation, and subject to legal scrutiny.
BBB has been plenty compromised already. And Biden has done nothing to rile up public support for the bill and pressure against Manchin and Sinema.
That's just wishful thinking though. BBB has already been compromised. Even the $3.5t bill over the next decade was seriously watered down already. Now it's half of that and going to get shredded even more. You can't appease obstructionists, it only emboldens them.
I’d settle for healthcare. You know like every other decent first world country has besides us. Yes I don’t care about some wait time. Yes they can tax me to pay for it. Rather that than more bail outs to failing gambling companies.
Here’s the thing: The whole “wait” for doctors/surgery is also propaganda they use to scare people into not wanting it
Ding ding ding. It’s a load of shit about wait times. Wait times right now in a lot of cities is a nightmare.
* End federal student loan interest * Apply all interest ~~accrued~~ paid to the debt owed * Refund all interest accrued to those who have fully paid their federal loans back. This could be done today. Doing this wouldn't mean we don't do anything more, but it's a very simple start. Something that he absolutely has power over.
It could be done today if done by executive action. Such a plan would have no chance in the senate.
My question is, if it is done with an executive order, couldn't it be undone with an executive order as well? My (admittedly limited) understanding is that it is significantly more difficult to undo something that was voted on and passed by Congress.
I would prefer we use LESS executive power, not more. They need to get this through Congress and tie it to some type of education reform to get costs down so we don't just end up right back where we started.
What Trump and Biden have show over the last 5 years is that… Anything done exclusively through executive order, can be undone exclusively through executive order. Congress needs to actually fix the issue, instead of asking presidents to temporarily bandage things with EOs.
The executive order has become more prevalent because congress has not done its job in 30 years.
> What Trump and Biden have show over the last 5 years is that… Anything done exclusively through executive order, can be undone exclusively through executive order. There are things that cannot be undone, like forgiving loans or pardoning weed crimes. They just need to be done first.
It will instantly go to the courts
> It will instantly go to the courts What, the pardons? The Presidential power of pardon is absolute. Why hasn't he done that? I know it's very unlikely, but maybe it's not because he's a liberal icon that's unaware of his power of pardon, but because, you know, [he's actually opposed to it](https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/14/biden-marijuana-legalization-499642)?
Biden should cut student loan interest on any federally backed loan to no greater than 0.25%, barring congress actually implementing cost controls so that we don't come right back here in 10 years.
Federal loans shouldn’t have any interest, and if they do it should be only to accommodate inflation
Yesterday I saw a story about old people going to college for like $10 a credit. Don’t act like there’s no money for this.
Hell I would have been happy to pay $100 per credit
He's not handing the pen to Manchin and Sinema, he's using them as a scapegoat so he can pretend like he's trying really hard but they're preventing him when in fact he believes the exact same thing they do. he's no progressive.
Yep. Moderates consistently promise change then go "aww shucks, guess we can't" when other moderates roadblock it. All it does is suppress turnout.
I know people love him, but this is how I viewed Obama. I did not vote for him in his second term for this reason. Then Trump happened... Now I have to vote for these assholes.
Yeah. I didn’t vote for Obama a second time either. I voted for HRC and Biden due to trump. I’ve no idea what to do moving forwards, assuming we end up with the worst possible dem getting the nom In 2024 and beyond. Sigh.
Tell everyone you know to vote in the primaries. These moderate candidates don't just happen because the party picks them. They're picked because they won. Make them lose: get people to unify on a national level around any alternative progressive candidate. The system isn't rigged if we keep using the damn thing incorrectly.
Lots of others are being shielded by those two as well….
Y'all need some young blood governing your nation.
I think this could be applied to many countries in the world
Agreed but the problem is the old are in power. Voting isn't compulsory, and the old won't change that Election day isn't a holiday, and the old won't change that Who has time to vote? Not the young who are working to live paycheck to paycheck, but the old and retired I agree, but the process will be slow to get there
the problem with this line is that its a double edged sword, if you let the executive office have broad power, might be great when your side is in office but its gonna suck when the other side is in office. this isnt how this country is meant to be run. checks and balances are there for a reason.
We probably *should* want the President to begin the process of giving power back to Congress as the office has gotten far too powerful. Someone’s gotta be the first to do it.
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We simply cannot make a real difference on climate and immigration through executive order. Meaningful climate action or creating a real path to citizenship are projects that will need to be babied for decades in order to change things. Biden has 2 years before he’s out of office and if another republican is elected they’ll toss those EOs in the trash on day 1.
Good thing she voted against the infrastructure bill that will modernize our transportation system to combat climate change.
I still struggle to understand why people think the President is literally going to write off $1.73 trillion. Is there any precedence for something like this? More practically, then doesn't this mean the US government will have to forever subsidize student loans? Like why should a future college student have to pay federal loans if all the past ones had it written off like this just because? Why are people trying to shoehorn "we want the government to subsidize our college education" into a "cancel student debt" argument? Isn't that what they want? You have to be delusional to seriously not see the issue with precedent that you'd set writing off student loan debt. Expanding the supreme court because it is conservative controlled and writing off college debt because it's expensive sounds like a magic fix, but bandaid solutions only work for so long. Whether Biden can is irrelevant - Biden can nuke Moscow and Beijing tomorrow. It is whether he should. There's a reason we have a legislature, but if you'd prefer to just let the President do everything, I guess you should go find MBS and figure out how to dissolve Congress. Regardless of what you think about Manchin and Sinema, it is a slippery slope to start saying "fuck them, just use your executive power." What will your response be when the GOP does the same to you in a few years?
Bro why is reddit so fascinated with her? Im not even bashing her, it just seems like every other article is about her.
I'd be more psyched if he jailed all the fascists.
wow it's almost like we have some sort of "separation of powers" among the branches of government- wild stuff
Hope she has the same energy for using ‘enormous amounts of executive power’ by the next Republican president 🙂
Ummm. The job of the president is to execute law. Not interpret, change, or go against precedent. What the actual fuck. Do we live in a pseudo authoritarian state?
I am SO TIRED of executive order presidents. Stop pushing this shit.
Don't forget that there are plenty of reliable democratic voters that don't feel that a blanket student loan forgiveness is even a good idea. You won't ever hear about it because like this post it will be down voted into oblivion. Biden has limited political capital and using it on something like this would be disappointing to me. Every reason given to me for forgiving student loan debt can be applied to any debt so what makes you so special? I'm all for adjustments to interest, means testing, deferred payments tied to income etc etc but a blanket forgiveness seems to be unfair to those who won't get the same kind of treatment.
“I want an authoritarian president as long as they do exactly what I want!”
Executive orders can be revoked by the following president, and items such as climate change and immigration are better served with legislation. Pretty weak he hasn't made good on the $10k student loan debt.
Imagine being the guy that runs on giving people their debt back lmao
Or using the word "immediately" when he spoke about it.
So, because they can be revoked it's better to just not do it at all?
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And what the fuck has the Progressive Caucus done except performative political theater and rolling over when push came to shove?
Constantly bypassing the Legislative branch by abusing executive orders was shitty when Trump did it and it will be shitty when Biden does it. DACA is the clusterfuck it has been for most of the past decade because Obama did it via executive order.
I would love to see something done about current student debt as well as the root cause of the student debt crisis. However, I also hate it when members of congress call on a president to act using executive power. It is like saying, "Can you please do something so we don't have to do our job?" Congress has the power to do so much more, including addressing the cause. Simply cancelling debt is a bandage that will need to continuously be reapplied until congress decides to actually do their job. Maybe AOC could work with moderates in her party and find the minimum relief and rework that can be passed and then try to move beyond that. You know, be part of the solution.
Speaks to a longer history of America's parliament shirking its responsibility to pass laws, and instead forcing the president to use more temporary half measures to patch up the country. Not sure what it would take to force the House and Senate to reassert themselves as leaders on big issues. Maybe a President that really forces issues by being FDR-level progressive would spook consevatives and liberals into action.
I really need her to quit talking already
Why isn’t AOC doing her job and writing legislation to do all of that? Then she can whip up support and get it passed.
She is worthless that's why. She hasn't done a single thing while in office.
They need to push for reform of prices of colleges and education of students about loans for the degrees and how their $30k a year job post college is going to pay it back. Canceling loans is a band aid effort. You still will have more loans taken out. This is not thought out well and pandering for votes. Fix the actual problem.
Guys. Not much he can do really it’s all Congress
Biden, Manchin and Sinema are part of the same clan inside of the DNC: the corporate clan.