The NAACP—the nation’s oldest civil rights organization—is stepping up its efforts to pressure the Biden administration to cancel student debt, after the administration excluded debt forgiveness from its $6 trillion budget proposal last week.
“Until we address the student loan debt crisis, which disproportionately impacts African Americans, we can never get to the question of home ownership, therefore accumulating wealth,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson.
On this issue, Johnson has the support of liberal Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who said that student loan forgiveness has to be an essential part of Biden’s top priorities.
“I believe in full student loan debt cancellation, but we have to push him to at the bare minimum a floor of $50,000 that Sen. [Elizabeth] Warren and Sen. [Chuck] Schumer have also advanced,” said Ocasio-Cortez.
On Friday, Warren called for immediate relief.
“Student debt is locking millions of young people out of the housing market,” she Tweeted. “They can’t come up with a down payment. They can’t qualify for a mortgage. All because they did exactly what everyone told them to do–get an education–and got stuck in a rigged system.”
Biden has called for forgiving $10,000 in student loan debt as part of a broader coronavirus relief effort and has extended a freeze on student loan payment through September 2021.
