Joe Biden is obligated to return bankruptcy to student loans by executive order.
Original Press Release
During the presidential primary campaign, Joe Biden said that he was endorsing Senator Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy plan, and his campaign dutifully copied and pasted key bullet points from her bankruptcy platform into theirs. The most important element of Senator Warren’s bankruptcy agenda, however, was her pledge to issue an executive order on Day One calling on the Department of Education to stop opposing federal student loan borrowers in bankruptcy court. Given this, it is fair to say that Mr. Biden has an obligation to issue this order on Day One as President.
As the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots citizen’s group fighting for student loan justice, we urge Joe Biden in the strongest terms to make good on this campaign promise, and issue an executive order the Department of Education to, along with its contractors, stop opposing federal student loan borrowers in bankruptcy court.
The Founding Fathers believed that bankruptcy rights were so important, they called for uniform bankruptcy laws in Article I of the Constitution ahead of the power to raise an army and declare war. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, and other founders were- themselves- being wrecked under predatory debt to British banks and merchants, so it is not surprising that they enshrined bankruptcy rights to prominently in the Constitution. Not the Bill of Rights- the body of the Constitution itself.
Today, student loans stand as the only loan in the country from which these rights have been stripped. The predatory, hyper-inflationary, and now catastrophically failed lending system that has resulted is precisely what they wished to avoid.
We believe strongly that all federal loans will have to be cancelled soon by executive order. In the meantime, however, President-elect Biden must at least take this executive action on day one as President if he is to be trusted by the 44 million student loan borrowers in the country, 80% of whom were never going to be able to repay their loans before the Covid-19 pandemic arose.
This is an early, key test of Mr. Biden’s honorability and trustworthiness going into his Presidency. We urge everyone with student loans to join us in holding Mr. Biden and his administration accountable to keeping this most important promise.
If you agree with this, please sign our petition calling on the President to cancel student loans by executive order. We are close to a million signatures, and need your help to cross the threshold.
