Great point.
The Bernie Bros who voted for Joe Biden have gotten royally f***ed for the past six months: the $15 minimum wage (the big structural change is gone), Medicare for All (which was never happening), the public option in health care (which was promised) and above all else on student loan debt. There is nothing stopping Joe from doing that one except his own unwillingness to so.
Regardless of you feel about the issue, you can recognize that student loan debt forgiveness was a big reason why college-educated Millennials with student loan debt voted for Joe Biden. They wanted to get out of debt. It was one of the key issues that caused them to get off the couch. Chuck Schumer has been giving Joe Biden a hard time for months now for not doing shit for those people.
I would be in favor of student loan interest rates being dropped to what the banks offer for savings accounts. 2%?
Neither Senator Schumer or Senator Sanders seem to remember that, long before he was receiving impressive contributions from China or The Ukraine, President Biden’s longest and most venerable client is The Credit Industry.
Moreover, you have to know that President Biden receives regular conferences from The NSA on the dangers facing the current configuration of The United States, (economick chaos, culture wars, and secession) the most combustible trigger of that potential bonfire being rampant inflation, triggered by massive debt, and, consequently, an evermore sinking dollar.
Thus, from both directions, it would seem President Biden’s hands are tied.
Surely his senatorial colleagues know all about this, and that bringing up the issue makes the president, their president, look bad.
That begs the question : why are they carrying on?
Nothing that makes any real difference can happen with the flick of a pen. So what if Schumer plays the part of populist reformer in this scene. Reform amounts to nothing. Populism is meaningless.
@Anonymous…
“Reform amounts to nothing. Populism is meaningless.”
If you mean by, ‘reform’, that profound economic transfers of wealth and restructuring were going to occur under a Biden Presidency, then, yes – he never intended to do such a thing, because he is a corporate Democrat, and all they shift around are the latest signs of virtue signaling.
President Biden has always been this way, the only thing having changed with him is which signs of virtue he shifts around, this because he is in a completely different time in history than when he started out on his political career.
As to Populism being meaningless, it is no more, or no less, meaningful than any other movement.
It’s the people in a movements, it’s leaders, and the interaction that they have that has the potential to leave it’s mark on history – not the system of ideas they propose.
In an of themselves, ideas are hollow.
It takes people to fill them out, because, in the end, we live in a very human world, not a world populated by cold & sterile theories.
“As to Populism being meaningless, it is no more, or no less, meaningful than any other movement”:
Ivan, I mean that Populism / populist reform is meaningless in the long term, though it could be seen as beneficial in the short run. People do tend to live and die in the short run, but meanwhile the system itself is not overthrown and changed.
@Anonymous…
Thank you for your clarification.
I certainly see what you mean.
Be well!
I work in Academia and there is way too much money in grants to R & D for projects with military applications for the government to allow debt forgiveness. It would mess up the military industrial complex.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once quipped that God, Guns, and Gays was the bubba bait republicans used to turn out voters.
Student loan forgiveness is the pajama boy bait to turn out Bernie bros to vote!