'Like Richard Nixon going to China, it may have taken a creature of the calcified Establishment like Biden to take such a remarkable step to the left,' argues RossBarkan
Photo: Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS There are enough reasons to decry Joe Biden’s somewhat belated decision to cancel some student-loan debt. Biden took until August of his second year as president and didn’t come close to delivering on his original campaign promise. There are plenty of non-wealthy Americans who hold far more than the debt Biden would relieve, who are desperate to escape burdens that will trail them for the rest of their lives.
Yet it is important, amid all the hand-wringing, to pause and reflect on what Biden is actually trying to do. No other American president attempted to cancel student debt. No president attempted to unilaterally erase such significant amounts of money owed to lenders. Not since the Affordable Care Act, perhaps, has a president tried to deliver benefits so tangible.
Like Richard Nixon going to China, it may have taken a creature of the calcified Establishment like Biden to take such a remarkable step to the left. Biden spent most of his career in the Senate clinging to the ideological middle, defending the credit-card industry, voting to deregulate Wall Street, and championing the carceral policies that fed America’s prison boom.
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