Over 80 lawmakers urge Biden to release memo outlining his authority on student debt cancellation
The Hill
Aris Folley
January 26, 2022
More than 80 lawmakers in both the House and Senate are urging President Biden to publicly release information on his legal authority to cancel student loan debt he requested from Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Lawmakers made the call in a letter sent to Biden on Tuesday, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Katie Porter (D-Calif.).
In the letter, lawmakers call on Biden to direct the Department of Education to “publicly release” a memo the administration ordered last year outlining the president’s authority to cancel student loans.
The letter comes roughly nine months after White House chief of staff Ron Klain publicly disclosed that the administration was working to prepare such a memo.
“He asked his secretary of Education, who’s just been on the job a few weeks, once he got on the job to have his department prepare a memo on the president’s legal authority, and hopefully we’ll see that in the next few weeks,” Klain said in an interview with Politico at the time. “And then he’ll look at that legal authority, he’ll look at the policy issues around that, and he’ll make a decision.”
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