Will Biden Finally Fix America's Crippling Student Debt Crisis?
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 2 December 2020
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Young people turned out in record numbers for the 2020 presidential election, and they overwhelmingly backed Joe Biden. Now, the hashtag #CancelStudentDebt has been trending on Twitter, as intense pressure mounts on the President-elect to finally tackle the $1.7 trillion student debt crisis holding millions of Americans, especially young Americans, hostage to often crippling monthly payments for years to come. “This feels like the closest we’ve ever been,” one education advocate recently told Time, referring to the chance for real policy changes. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who has established herself as the loudest voice on the matter, large-scale debt forgiveness would provide “the single most effective economic stimulus that is available through executive action.” But how likely is that? Can this finally be fixed?
On this week’s episode of the Mother Jones Podcast, we’re revisiting our big investigation by journalist Ryann Liebenthal into America’s broken student debt machine. We first brought you this story in August 2018, detailing the flailing government program known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness, a system that, when Biden was a candidate, he pledged to streamline and reform. “It should be done immediately,” he said, referring to the passage of new legislation. But that depends on who controls the Senate come January, and Biden’s professed urgency must inevitably be tempered with a tough political reality.
To bring us up to speed on what’s changed since the campaign and what Biden’s picks for his economic team can tell us about his ambitions, we also chatted to our very own transition tracker, Washington, DC, political reporter Kara Vogt. “The demands for canceling student debt have not ceased since president-elect Joe Biden won in November,” Voght says. “It’s not just the grassroots, not just progressive who are calling for this.” Revisit our original written investigation here.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesTranscript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. |
| 0:02.8 | I'm Jimmy La King in Brooklyn. |
| 0:04.8 | On today's show, on today's show, when the presidential election was finally called, did you take a peek at your bank account and wonder, |
| 0:20.0 | maybe, just maybe someone will finally tackle the country's student debt crisis or not. |
| 0:26.8 | Why is none of this focused on helping people get an affordable education, one that will actually help them get ahead. |
| 0:35.0 | Hashtag cancel student debt has been trending on Twitter. |
| 0:38.0 | So today we're revisiting a big Mother Jones investigation into America's rage-inducing student debt machine and asking, |
| 0:47.0 | will it finally be fixed? Stick around. But first, let's bring you up to speed with some of the maneuvering by the Biden |
| 1:00.4 | transition team and what it might mean for student debt and broader economic |
| 1:05.2 | policy with our Washington DC politics reporter Kara Vote who has been tracking |
| 1:10.3 | this transition. Hey Kara Cara. Hello. |
| 1:14.0 | First question, you know, you are tracking this transition. |
| 1:18.0 | Broad scope, what are you seeing? |
| 1:20.0 | So a few things. |
| 1:21.8 | One is that the demands for canceling student debt have not ceased. |
| 1:26.7 | In fact, it was one of the first things that people started to talk about after his election, |
| 1:30.6 | which was kind of surprising because nothing about his stance had changed from before election day to after. |
| 1:37.0 | He had always supported ever since the coronavirus pandemic set in, cancelling $10,000 of student debt for everyone. |
| 1:45.9 | And that was couched as a economic measure to help with the rising unemployment |
| 1:51.4 | and other issues related to coronavirus and the recession that we're facing. |
| 1:55.8 | During the presidential primary, Senator Elizabeth Warren had called for cancelling up to |
| 2:01.5 | 50,000 dollars of student debt for individuals. called for held and a senator Chuck Schumer who is the leading Democrat in the Senate and if |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mother Jones, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Mother Jones and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.