How possible is it for student debt to be canceled? Like is it plausible for a president to do so and if so how would they do it?
In: Economics
The federal government could cancel public loans, but it would lose a lot of money. It uses that money for new loans; it would take another big appropriation to keep the lending program going.
Debt is not the biggest problem, but a symptom of excessively high costs of higher education. (Generous lending has contributed to that.) Debt forgiveness by itself would not do much; if you want to relieve poverty there’s better ways to target it. It’s kind of like immigration: who is currently in the U.S. might attract the most attention, but the long-term flow is really where the political problem to be solved.
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