The Bold Economic Move Joe Biden Refuses to Make
As Senator Elizabeth Warren sees it, President Joe Biden can solve a lot of problems—for millions of Americans financially, and for himself politically—with a single move that neither Senator Joe Manchin nor any Republican in Congress could veto. The president, she says, should unilaterally wipe out up to $50,000 in student-loan debt for every federal borrower in the country.
Warren has been beating this drum for just about two years, ever since she unveiled the proposal in a bid to outflank her rivals—including Biden—in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. The senator from Massachusetts has won influential converts to her cause over the past year, most notably Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. But Biden is not one of them. “I will not make that happen,” he bluntly told a questioner asking about the proposal at a town hall a few weeks after he took office.
The president’s political fortunes are very different now than they were then. His ambitious social-spending agenda, already chopped in half, in the Senate. Biden’s approval ratings have fallen to the low 40s, and with the pandemic raging and Congress bickering, his
