With Vice President Kamala Harris looking likely to be the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election, voters are eager to learn what new policies she might implement if she defeats Republican Donald Trump in the race for the White House.
Handfuls of the issues present in the 2020 election continue to be a major concern for voters today, and education loan forgiveness continues to be a key issue for families across the United States, in a survey surveyed by Bankrate in May of 2,407 U.S. adults, 18% indicated that education loan debt would have a major influence on their vote this November; and 29 percent called student loan debt a “national crisis.”
Since 2020, President Joe Biden has enacted sweeping changes to student loan forgiveness during his term, including automatically canceling debt for those who have been paying for 20 years or more and reducing Zero payment amounts per month for those earning less than $32,800 annually.
Student Debt Relief in a Year of Elections
While countless debt relief programs proposed by the Biden-Harris administration have been criticized or blocked by Republican lawmakers, the federal government has allowed $146 billion in education loan debt relief for 4 million citizens. of the United States, according to the White House.
Under Biden, Harris has unsurprisingly followed the lead of a sitting vice president, but what positions has she held before and what has she said about education loan forgiveness?
What Kamala Harris Has Said About Cancelling Student Debt
Under President Biden’s leadership, Harris continues to push the federal government’s sweeping changes to education loan forgiveness, however, prior to her successful 2020 campaign, Harris proposed her own ideas, with reference to student loan forgiveness.
In her first campaign for the Oval Office, which began and ended in 2019, Harris made a proposal for a very different idea than Biden and other candidates regarding student loan forgiveness, she made the proposal to forgive only the debt of Pell Grant recipients who start successful businesses that benefit underprivileged communities.
The proposal did not gain much traction over other candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who proposed removing billions of dollars of student debt.
However, Harris has provided support for Biden’s numerous plans to address student debt over the past four years, having improved the current administration’s record in combating growing student debt.
“When POTUS and I took office, only 7,000 people had received student debt relief through public service loan forgiveness,” Harris said on her X, formerly Twitter, profile earlier this month. “We facilitated debt forgiveness for teachers, firefighters and others, and to date, nearly 950,000 public officials have benefited.”
Speaking to CNBC, a White House spokesperson said Harris is proud of the work the current administration has done to forgive $167 billion in student debt for nearly 5 million borrowers so far, and that planning is underway. more relief.