“This brings the total debt cancellation my administration has approved to $132 billion for over 3.6 million Americans through various actions,” Biden said in a statement.
It kinda sounds like they wouldn’t have been canceled if he hadn’t made the effort. That’s no difference from any other debt forgiveness that’s within his power.
This is actually a remnant of his larger plan for cancelling student debt being blocked. So if it should have been done anyhow, we’re now…celebrating presidents for… doing their jobs?
No, I’d prefer if a president did his job to begin with and didn’t try to take loud credit for a program that wasn’t his when he finally gets around to doing his job.
I think the idea here is this.
The Executive Branch has checks and balances over both of the other two branches of government. Part of that is discretion.
The Executive is not, at all times, bound to the direction provided by Congress (see: lack of enforcement of Marijuana laws). This frustrates many when the wrong decisions are being made. And we love it when the right ones are.
So someone had stopped performing debt relief as instructed by Congress. Discretion, good or bad. Then Biden directs that the instructions be followed.
He kind of didn’t have to do that. I’m glad he did and I think it’s the basics of doing his job… But he could have just not done it and reminded entities that running a campaign is expensive or that he’ll be retiring at some point.
