Kuttner on TAP: Time for Student Debt Cancellation

For months, Biden has delayed making a decision. The back-from-the-dead negotiations with Joe Manchin deferred presidential action another few weeks while the White House did not want to rile deficit hawks.

Now, an order on debt cancellation is imminent. It is likely to be capped at $10,000 per debtor, with income limits. The naysayers argue that even $10,000 is too much. They are wrong.

One contention is that debt relief is a form of stimulus that the overheated economy doesn’t need. But there is currently a temporary moratorium on debt payments that cancellation will simply make permanent. So in terms of putting additional spendable money in the pockets of debtors, there’s no change (though at some point, temporary pauses would have to end).

Last year, when the economy was in recession and Congress was debating the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget examined the stimulative impact of different policies. Debt relief capped at $10,000 was far less stimulative than most. It generated spending of just thirteen cents per dollar of federal outlay.

Another argument is that debt cancellation is distributively backwards: On average, people who go to college are better off than people who don’t. This simplistic view is profoundly wrong.

At $10,000 cancellation, the debt is wiped out for roughly the bottom one-third of debtors (about 15 million out of 45 million carrying student debt). These are not the people who borrowed large sums to go to law school, med school, or business school and now earn high-six-figure incomes. Typically, they are strivers—first-generation college students from low- and moderate-income families who borrowed because they didn’t have affluent parents to pay tuition.

Even better than $10,000 cancellation would be $20,000, a cap that Biden is unlikely to support.

At $20,000, half of all debtors have their debt canceled completely, and at least half of all debt is canceled for three-quarters. But $20,000 is still a small fraction of the debt owed by the typical doctor, lawyer, or MBA, and that problem could be addressed by income limits.

Debt cancellation is also a particular benefit for the roughly ten million people now in default who risk ruined credit ratings. It is a well-targeted gain for people who never graduated and now face the double burden of relatively low incomes and debt repayment. These debtors are disproportionately African American.

Supposedly, people who dutifully paid off their debts will resent relief for those who did not. But this premise leaves out the factor of salience. Relief is far more meaningful for those who receive it than those who arguably resent it secondhand. We have not heard a peep out of these supposedly resentful people as the repayment moratorium has been repeatedly extended during the pandemic.

Biden should include a special process for genuine hardship cases—such as people with severe medical problems or those now in their seventies and eighties who co-signed loans for children or even grandchildren. We need more far-reaching reform, such as free community college and an end to the debt-for-diploma system altogether. For now, partial debt cancellation is a good start.