Jim Tankersley, New York Times White House correspondent, joins Cheddar News to discuss the Biden Administration's new student loan forgiveness program. Tankersley helps break down how we got to this point after a year and a half of internal deliberation in the West Wing. 

Cheddar Politics

White House Announces Student Loan Forgiveness

Welcome back to cheddar politics. Over two years after the first extension of a pause on student loan repayments. President biden has announced the final pause with what he characterized as a responsible middle road on student debt loan debt forgiveness. To help us break it all down, how we get to where we are now. We have James jim Tankersley joining us now. He is the White House correspondent for the New york Times. Thank you so much jim for coming onto the show. I want to start off with the lead up to this monumental decision on his first day in office, President biden extended the pause on student loans and canceling student loan debt was a big campaign promise. Now, why do you think it took more than a year and a half to make this decision on the policy? Well, I think two big things, one, the president has been very busy with a very changing economy over that time and to the President has been divided, pushed and pulled by different advisers on what exactly he should do here. So his way of hunting has been to extend that pause which was put in place during the depths of the pandemic recession and will now end up having lasted almost three years by the time it lifts early next year. Um While he tried to figure out what exactly to do with debt relief. Um after, I mean, he has had a lot of conversations with a lot of Democratic lawmakers, a lot of outside groups, a lot of his own internal staff with economists and he finally sort of in recent weeks came to this decision for what was frankly a more expansive version of debt relief than many people had expected him to do now. Speaking of those conversations with the democratic lawmakers, progressives like massachusetts, Senator Elizabeth Warren have pressed the biden administration on this since he came into office. They were asking for much more loftier amount like 50 K. But of course that didn't happen now. Do you think that this pressure though is ultimately what worked? I think it's part of what worked. Certainly, I certainly think that that those lawmakers think that it really helped. Um whether it was Elizabeth Warren or Raphael Warnock from, from Georgia or senator chuck schumer, the majority leader, they were all in the presidency or a lot about this, they took a lot of opportunities to lobby him to go as big as possible. Um He did not end up doing the full expanse of what they wanted, as you noted, the $50,000 or even full debt relief as Senator Bernie Sanders would like to see. But I think those senators are feeling very good today that they were successful in helping to make the case to the president that he should go bigger than just a targeted $10,000 debt relief, which had been sort of the early indications of what was under consideration and midterms are just two months away? I mean, how do you, how much do you think that politics came into play with the timing of this decision? Well, it's the president and, and I think that their politics are always at play. Um, but certainly he had set himself a deadline for the end of august and the pause was going to expire. And so he had to do something. I know that there were voices inside the White House really making the case that they needed to do something for young voters in particular here to show them they were, he was following through on a promise and in particular off the heels of signing a major climate bill earlier this month, they thought that that made a good portfolio of things to take to young voters ahead of the midterms and say, hey, democrats can deliver for you. You should come out and support us. Obviously there are risks though, a backlash from people who find this to be unfair, particularly the risk is among voters who think, hey, I paid off my loans or I didn't go to college at all. Why should this other group get relief that I'm not eligible for? Well, on the idea of, I guess challenges and kind of diving deeper. Um, we are hearing about potential legal challenges from the right who claim that biden just doesn't have the authority to make this move alone. Where do you think this puts the odds of this policy actually making it to the finish line if there's so many legal challenges potentially in the future? Well, there are almost certain to be legal challenges. It's unclear who might have standing to sue on this, but it is definitely at least some gray area legally about whether the president has the authority to do. This is something that again, inside the administration, there was a debate on, but they concluded that they very much did have the authority to do it and they'll, I'm sure defend it in court if they they have to. Um but it's not going to happen right away either way, whether it's a court challenge or not, the Department of Education is to set up basically the mechanism for which people can apply for this loan belief that's I think part of the reason why the pause was extended one more time was to try to get those things up and running. So it's not going to be overnight, even if everyone agreed he had the authority. And because there's possible challenges that could slow it down, even more republicans are also narrowing in on the thought process about inflation being a bit concerned. Do you think that there's uh there are reasons to be concerned about inflation? Well, there's always reasons to be concerned about inflation in this economy, inflation has become such a huge topic. It's such a huge concern for people across the income spectrum right now. Um but the economists that I have talked to and seen published just today, um basically have the same view on this, which is that look, it could add a little bit to inflation. It's also possible that the restart of payments next year by ending the pause could detract from inflation. Goldman Sachs out today basically saying it probably comes out in the wash to know a factor even a little bit of a drag on inflation. So I have yet to talk to an economist who thinks this is going to be huge fuel on the inflation fire. But on the other hand, this White House is very nervous about anything that could feed inflation right now. And so that was definitely a consideration when they made this call. Excellent insight there. Thanks to Jim Take carelessly, the White House correspondent for the new york Times. And after the break we discuss how political leaders, celebrities and businesses are uniting to recruit a new generation of poll workers. We sit down with the program director of Power the polls next, so stay tuned