President Joe Biden said Thursday that he's “taking a hard look” at canceling additional federal student loan debt and will reach a decision within a month.
“I am considering dealing with some debt reduction,” Biden told reporters in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.
The comments came days after Biden had a private meeting with Democratic lawmakers who pressed him on the issue. One of the lawmakers, Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., said afterwards that Biden disclosed he was exploring the possibility.
However, Biden signaled in his Thursday remarks that he wouldn't go as far as some activists want, saying $50,000 in debt forgiveness was not under consideration. He did not give a number for what he was considering.
“I'm in the process of taking a hard look at whether or not there will be additional debt forgiveness,” he said. "And I’ll have an answer on that in the next couple of weeks.”
During his campaign, Biden said he wanted to “immediately cancel” at least $10,000 in student debt per person. So far he's repeatedly extended a pause on requiring borrowers to repay their loans, a moratorium that was put in place under then-President Donald Trump near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although activists have been encouraged by their increasing traction on this issue, some said they were concerned that Biden wouldn't go far enough.
“President Biden, we agree that we shouldn’t cancel $50,000 in student loan debt. We should cancel all of it,” said Wisdom Cole, national director of the NAACP Youth & College Division. “$50,000 was just the bottom line.”
Sabrina Siddiqui, National Politics Reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins to break down the SNAP funding delays and the human cost of the ongoing shutdown.
Arguments at the Supreme Court have concluded for the day as the justices consider President Donald Trump's sweeping unilateral tariffs in a trillion-dollar test of executive power.
President Donald Trump said he has decided to lower his combined tariff rates on imports of Chinese goods to 47% after talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on curbing fentanyl trafficking.
The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate Wednesday for a second time this year as it seeks to shore up economic growth and hiring even as inflation stays elevated. The move comes amid a fraught time for the central bank, with hiring sluggish and yet inflation stuck above the Fed’s 2% target. Compounding its challenges, the central bank is navigating without much of the economic data it typically relies on from the government. The Fed has signaled it may reduce its key rate again in December but the data drought raises the uncertainty around its next moves. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that there were “strongly differing views” at the central bank's policy meeting about to proceed going forward.
U.S. and Chinese officials say a trade deal between the world’s two largest economies is drawing closer. The sides have reached an initial consensus for President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping to aim to finalize during their high-stakes meeting Thursday in South Korea. Any agreement would be a relief to international markets. Trump's treasury secretary says discussions with China yielded preliminary agreements to stop the precursor chemicals for fentanyl from coming into the United States. Scott Bessent also says Beijing would make “substantial” purchases of soybean and other agricultural products while putting off export controls on rare earth elements needed for advanced technologies.
