A month out from Biden’s transfer of power to Trump, the president used his power to announce a massive new round of student loan forgiveness for public service workers. The news comes as Republicans in Congress are still scrambling to avert a government shutdown.
The Biden administration Friday morning said it would cancel $4.28 billion in student loans for 55,000 teachers, nurses, service members, law enforcement officials, and other public servants. The relief brings the total of student debt forgiveness under Biden to nearly $180 billion for nearly five million people, according to a Department of Education statement.
The cancellations will be through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF, which forgives public service workers’ remaining federal student loan balance after 10 years of payments. In recent years, the Biden administration has taken steps to reform and improve access to the program, which had long been plagued by mismanagement.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona in a statement praised the administration’s newly announced relief and broader success revamping PSLF, saying, “Four years ago, the Biden-Harris Administration made a pledge to America’s teachers, service members, nurses, first responders, and other public servants that we would fix the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and I’m proud to say that we delivered.”
A White House statement from President Biden said, “Because of our actions, millions of people across the country now have the breathing room to start businesses, save for retirement, and pursue life plans they had to put on hold because of the burden of student loan debt.”
As Biden’s efforts to enact sweeping student forgiveness have largely been mired or dashed by Republican-led legal challenges, the administration has since pivoted to a revised “Plan B,” which targets specific groups of borrowers. The incoming Trump administration is expected to take a hostile stance toward student debt forgiveness.
Trump and the rest of the GOP seem to be even more at odds over the debt ceiling than initially believed.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous debt ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal,” the president-elect wrote on Truth Social in the early hours of Friday morning. “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is president.”
“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th, under ‘TRUMP.’ This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” he continued in another post.
This is bad news for the party of “fiscal responsibility.” Trump floated completely abolishing the debt ceiling on Thursday, telling NBC News that it would be the “smartest thing to do.”
“I would support that entirely.… The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump said. “It doesn’t mean anything, except psychologically.”
On Thursday evening, the House voted on a Trump-backed spending bill that included a two-year suspension of the debt ceiling. That more modest measure was rejected by a whopping 38 Republicans who voted against. The infighting is set to come to a head on Friday, as the government will shut down at midnight Saturday if an agreement is not reached. Perhaps Republicans aren’t as beholden to Trump and his budget wishes as we initially thought.
The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report Thursday, based on interviews with nearly 50 people knowledgeable of the operations of the Biden White House. The story details the extent to which the president’s age has posed an issue throughout his presidency, including from the very start, and the lengths to which aides went to conceal it.
President Biden, now 82, was 78 years old when he took office, and the Journal reports that administration officials began to notice signs of his age “in just the first few months of his term,” as he would grow “tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.”
Those who met with the president were reportedly told that “exchanges should be short and focused.” Meetings were strategically scheduled and, sometimes, if Biden “was having an off day,” they were simply canceled. A former aide recalled a national security official saying, regarding one rescheduled meeting, “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow.”
The Journal reported that lawmakers, Cabinet members, and the public all seemed to have less face time with the president than in previous administrations and that senior advisers were “often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy.” Namely, administration officials like Jake Sullivan, Steve Ricchetti, and Lael Brainard frequently functioned as intermediaries for the president.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith reportedly sought to reach Biden ahead of his withdrawal from Afghanistan “but couldn’t get on the phone with him.” Smith noted that he was more frequently in touch with Barack Obama when he was president, though he wasn’t then the House Armed Services chair. Representative Jim Hines, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, similarly told the Journal, “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior.”
As for Biden and his Cabinet members, the Journal reports that interactions “were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted.” One reportedly gave up on trying to request calls with him altogether “because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome.” The report reveals too that Biden struggled to “recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him” as he prepared for his interview with special counsel Robert Hur—who was investigating whether Biden mishandled classified material and in February determined that a jury would consider him “a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
On the 2024 campaign trail, the report says, Biden’s team often vetted questions from event attendees in advance. Pollsters for the campaign were also seemingly kept at arm’s length: The Journal reports that “Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him,” as the president often seemed unaware of the ample polling showing he was trailing Trump.
Years of such incidents culminated in Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate performance. President-elect Donald Trump will, like Biden, be 78 at his inauguration and 82 by the end of his term.
Source : New Republic